1976

NJ Supreme Court hands down opinion in case of Karen Ann Quinlan, authorizing Quinlan family to have her taken off respirator. By accepting the argument, built on Roe v. Wade, that “a constitutionally protected right to privacy overlay the doctor-patient relationship,” it “installed judges at the bedside” (Rothman, 225ff.). “How could [the court] substitute legal rulings for bedside ethics? The answer was by impeaching medicine; that is, by insisting that what doctors testified to in court and what they did at the bedside [arbitrarily deciding to discontinue treatment via DNR, etc.] were two different things, and that physicians’ efforts to smooth over the contradictions were lame” (226). “Decisions to terminate or withdraw treatment that individual physicians had once made covertly now would take place before an audience. The stage was likely to be a courtroom, and lawyers and judges, the leading actors” (228).