If Patients can choose to die shouldn't they also be able to choose to life?

• §54.1-2990 of Virginia's Health Care Decisions Act now authorizes denial of life-saving medical treatment against the will of a patient or family whenever a doctor considers it "medically or ethically inappropriate."
• Many doctors now consider "medically or ethically inappropriate" not just treatment that would not save a patient's life, but also treatment that would save life if a doctor, in disagreement with the patient and family, thinks the patient's quality of life is too poor.
• A nursing home study in the March 1991 New England Journal of Medicine found that 25% of the time advance directives were not followed by the nursing home and medical staff. In 18% of the cases the patients were denied treatment they had requested, compared to only 7% of cases in which treatment they had rejected was provided.1
• In September 1990, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article arguing that when family members asking that a patient be resuscitated have "views about suffering and quality of life {that} differ from those of most reasonable people then physicians should not be forced to adhere to family preference."2
• 79% of Americans say a family should be able to choose life support for an unconscious patient even if the doctor thinks the patient's quality of life is too low, according to a Wirthlin Worldwide poll February 5-8, 1999.
• The Virginia Patient Autonomy Protection Act, sponsored by Sen. J. Randy Forbes (R/Chesapeake) and Del. H. Morgan Griffith (R/Salem), would require that a doctor or hospital respect a patient or family's wish to provide life-saving treatment just until the patient can be transferred to another health care provider willing to treat.
• The bill would NOT mandate physiologically futile treatment. It would only require treatment the denial of which "would in reasonable medical judgment be likely to result in the death of the patient." Nor would it require an unwilling physician to preserve the patient's life indefinitely - only for two weeks or such additional time as a judge determines would allow for "a reasonable prospect that a physician willing to accept transfer and to comply with the directive or treatment decision can be found."

  Footnotes

  1 Marion Danis, M.D., et al., "A Prospective Study of Advance Directives For Life-Sustaining Care." New England Journal of Medicine vol. 324 (March 28, 1991) p. 882.
  

  2 J. Chris Hackler & F. Charles Hiller, M.D., "Family Consent to Orders Not to Resuscitate," Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 264, p. 1281 (September 12, 1990).

  Virginia Society for Human Life, the Virginia Affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee, Inc., P.O. Box 6925, Richmond, VA. 23230 - 804/358-8745 Fax No.: 804/358-8789

  Published January 2000