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Published on: August 14, 2013
Withholding nutrition on the conscious mentally disabled patient: a review and commentary
1The Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA.
Abstract:
A recent important and poorly publicized legal case in California raised the question of whether the wife of a severely mentally disabled man could intentionally withhold medically supplied nutrition from him on the grounds that it was no longer providing benefits. Rita L. Marker has published a detailed case report and analysis. The readers of the Newsletter on Ethics and Intellectual Disability should know about her analysis. A summary is presented here together with some observations about the issues the case raises. Readers are encouraged to consult the original article: Rita L. Marker, "Mental Disability and Death by Dehydration." National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 2 (Spring 2002): 125-36. All quotations are from the Marker analysis.
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