| In the last days of the final editing of this book the SupremeCourt of die State of New Jersey overturned a lower courtdecision and, in effect, granted Karen Quinlan s father tileright and responsibility, once it has been confirmed that thereis no reasonable possibility of Karen s ever emerging from herpresent comatose condition, to decide whether life-supportinginterventions must continue. Karen Quinlan s fate, of course,could be that of any one of us. The ethical, legal, and socialdilemmas confronting us in her tragic case ace the subject ofthis volume. My ol2jective has not been to write a philosophical analysisof the ethics of death and dying--or at least not that alone.Rather, it has been much broader. At the Institute of Society,Ethics and tile Life Sciences, where for most 0f the past sixyears 1 have had the privilege of being the Director of itsResearch Group on death and Dying, we are convinced thatthe best hope lot gaining insight into the complex dilemmasposed by the technological and biological revolutions is aneclectic spirit combining contributions from many disciplines.This volume is written in that spirit. It begins with more theo-retical reflection--sometimes philosophical, sometimes moretheological--and moves through a maze of technical medicaland legal facts toward examination of alternative public andpersonal policy. The biological revolution has challenged us inour dying and our death, much as it has challenged us in ourliving. In a simpler day we often knew, or thought we knew, whatour objectives were ibr medicine. Someone dying of pneumo-nia, who had heard that some drug would restore his health,needed to know what the drug was or at least how to get it.No obvious moral problem, arose. It was clear what wouldproduce the best consequences and, for the most part, whatwas the right thing to do. Now, however, with miraculous butonly partially successful interventions, such as those given toKaren Quinlan, it is not at all clear what alternative actions will |
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