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.
San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, June 14, 2001
Doctor found reckless for not relieving pain
$1.5 million jury verdict for family of cancer patient who went home to Hayward to die
Matthew Yi, Chronicle Staff Writer
In a trial that became a forum for the debate over how pain is treated in American medicine, an Alameda County jury yesterday found that an internist committed elder abuse and reckless negligence by not giving enough pain medication to a Hayward man dying of cancer.
A California lawsuit may give you additional reason to make sure that your patients are adequately treated for pain.
In the first case to assert that failure to treat pain adequately is a form of elder abuse, an Alameda County, Calif., court ruling allows the case to proceed to trial.
A jury has awarded $1.5 million to the family of a man who accused his doctor of not prescribing enough pain medication during a battle with lung cancer.
