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INJURED MAN IN LIFE SUPPORT CASE DIES Court: His wife and mother had battled for years over the right to end medical aid.

July 18, 2001

Los Angeles Times

Maura Dolan, Times Legal Affairs Writer

Robert Wendland, focus of California court

case, photographed in May, prior to his death

San Francisco– A severely disabled man who is the subject of a closely watched right-to-die case before the California Supreme Court died of pneumonia Tuesday, family lawyers and a hospital official said.

BY ADAM FRESCO, The Times of London

A terminally ill man won a legal battle yesterday for the right to die at home after a health authority agreed to fund his nursing care. Lawyers for Jason Powell, who has multiple sclerosis and pneumonia and has only a few months to live, challenged Dyfed Powys Health Authority’s refusal to fund home care as a breach of his human rights.

Patients considering euthanasia are worried less about unbearable pain than about the social and emotional disintegration that accompanies terminal illness, a new survey has found.

The Voluntary Euthanasia Research Foundation conference in Broken Hill, Australia, yesterday gave overwhelming support to the development in Australia of a suicide pill able to provide the terminally ill with the means to their own dignified death.

A unanimous state Supreme Court made it difficult today for Wendland family members to withdraw life-sustaining medical treatment for a patient who is brain-damaged but still conscious.

A Green Bay woman who told police she helped a terminally ill man kill himself waived her right to a preliminary hearing Tuesday and was ordered to stand trial for assisting a suicide.

THE AGE (Melbourne)

EUTHANASIA GROUPS COOL ON SUICIDE PILL

By Brett Foley, Medical Reporter

3 August, 2001 (Melbourne). Plans by euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke to develop a suicide pill appear likely to be dismissed by other interest groups this weekend as the Democrats and the Greens renew plans for private members’ bills to reinstate the Northern Territory’s right-to-die legislation.

The UN Human Rights Committee expressed fears Friday that new Dutch legislation allowing euthanasia might lead to general insensitivity over so-called mercy killings.

The Law: Terminating Life Sustaining Treatment

Selected Articles on the Robert Wendland Case

Case Description

The state Supreme Court at a hearing in San Francisco, May 30, 2000 took up the question of how decisions should be made on whether to withdraw life support from someone with severe brain damage.

The court’s seven justices considered the case of Robert Wendland of Stockton, California, who became severely cognitively impaired after a 1993 accident in his pick-up truck.

The California Supreme Court has begun hearing the case of a woman who wants permission to pull her husband off life support because she says that is what he would have wanted after an auto accident left him in a near-vegetative state.

Accident victim Robert Wendland is “minimally conscious.” His wife wants to let him die. His mother wants to keep him alive. Now he’s a test case before the state Supreme Court.

Appellate Court Says Wife Has Right to Disconnect Husband’s Life Support

DOUG WILLIS, Associated Press Writer

February 24, 2000

17:49 PST SACRAMENTO (AP) — An appellate court ruled Thursday that the wife of a Stockton man who suffered severe brain damage — and has been paralyzed and unable to communicate since a 1993 traffic accident — has the right to disconnect his life support over the objections of his mother.