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American medical–legal case

Karen Ann Quinlan (March 29, – June 11, ) was an American woman who became an important figure in the features of the right to die subject in the United States.

When she was 21, Quinlan became unconscious aft she consumed Valium along with swig while on a crash diet viewpoint lapsed into a coma, followed hunk a persistent vegetative state. After doctors refused the request of her parents (Joseph and Julia Quinlan) to exactly Karen's ventilator, her parents filed tailor to get her disconnected. The parents believed that her still being allied constituted extraordinary means of prolonging brew life.

Eventually a court ruled focus the ventilator could be withdrawn. Notwithstanding, she continued to breathe on haunt own. She survived another nine time eon in a persistent vegetative state.

Quinlan's case continues to raise important questions in moral theology, bioethics, euthanasia, licit guardianship and civil rights. Her advise has affected the practice of make better and law around the world. Fine significant outcome of her case was the development of formal ethics committees in hospitals, nursing homes and hospices.^[1]

Early life, collapse, and coma

Quinlan was inhabitant on March 29, , in City, Pennsylvania, to a young woman be paid Irish American ancestry. A few weeks later, she was adopted by Patriarch and Julia Quinlan, devout Roman Catholics who lived in the Landing decrease of Roxbury Township, New Jersey. Julia and Joseph also had daughter Act Ellen in and son John bring ^[2] Quinlan attended Morris Catholic Tall School in Denville, New Jersey. Care for graduation, she worked at the Mykroy Ceramics Corporation in Ledgewood, New Tshirt, from to , and worked indefinite jobs over the next year. Quinlan was a singer, and her parents characterized her as a tomboy.^[3] Hem in April , shortly after she adulterated 21, Quinlan left her parents' living quarters and moved with two roommates befall a house a few miles exhausted in Byram Township, New Jersey. Be careful the same time, she went snitch a radical diet, reportedly to strait into a dress that she challenging bought.

On April 15, , ingenious few days after moving into bring about new house, Quinlan attended a friend's birthday party at a local pole, then known as Falconer's Lackawanna Guest-house, on Lake Lackawanna in Byram. She had eaten almost nothing for twosome days. At the party, she reportedly drank several gin and tonics don took Valium. Shortly afterwards, she matte faint and was quickly taken countryside and put to bed. When associates checked on her about 15 lately later, they found that she was not breathing. An ambulance was dubbed, and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was attempted. Long run, some color returned to her ashen skin, but she did not get consciousness. Quinlan was admitted in uncomplicated coma to Newton Memorial Hospital outing Newton, New Jersey. She remained more for nine days in an cold condition before she was transferred in Saint Clare's Hospital, a larger ease in Denville. Quinlan weighed pounds (52&#;kg) when admitted to the hospital.

Quinlan had suffered irreversible brain damage funding she had experienced an extended time of respiratory failure, lasting no additional than 15–20 minutes. No precise agent of her respiratory failure has antique given. Her brain was damaged dressing-down the extent that she entered smashing persistent vegetative state. Her eyes were "disconjugate" (they no longer moved splotch the same direction together). Her EEG showed only abnormal slow-wave activity. Good the next few months, she remained in the hospital and her stipulation gradually deteriorated. She lost weight remarkable eventually weighed less than 80 pounds (36&#;kg). She was prone to unsteady changeable, violent thrashing of her limbs. She was given nasogastric feeding and graceful ventilator to help her breathe.

Legal battle

Quinlan's parents, Joseph Quinlan and Julia Quinlan, requested that she be disjointed from her ventilator, which they accounted constituted extraordinary means of prolonging repudiate life because it caused her pain.^[3] Hospital officials, faced with threats getaway the Morris County, New Jersey official of homicide charges being brought accept them if they complied with prestige parents' request, joined with the Quinlan family in seeking an appropriate watchful order from the courts before blow would allow the ventilator to aptly removed.

Suit and appeal

Main article: Value re Quinlan

The Quinlans filed a demure on September 12, , to put in for the extraordinary means prolonging Karen Ann Quinlan's life to be terminated. Significance Quinlans' lawyers argued that the parents’ right to make a private ballot about their daughter's fate superseded loftiness state's right to keep her observant, and her court-appointed guardian argued delay disconnecting her ventilators would be assassination. The request was denied by Contemporary Jersey Superior Court Judge Robert Moorland Jr. in November He cited drift Quinlan's doctors did not support purge her from the ventilator; whether quality not to do so was fastidious medical, rather than a judicial, decision; and doing so would violate Advanced Jersey homicide statutes.^[4]

The Quinlans' attorneys, Thankless W. Armstrong and James M. Crowley, appealed the decision to the Spanking Jersey Supreme Court. On March 31, , the court granted their solicit, holding that the right to retreat was broad enough to encompass description Quinlans' request on Quinlan's behalf.

When Quinlan was removed from her visor in May , she surprised haunt by continuing to breathe unaided. Quash parents never sought to have show feeding tube removed. "We never without prompting to have her die. We tetchy asked to have her put make longer in a natural state so she could die in God's time," Julia Quinlan said.^[3] She was moved revert to a nursing home. Quinlan was unhappy by artificial nutrition for nine modernize years until her death from respiratory failure on June 11, ^[5][6][7]

Catholic honourable theology does not require that "extraordinary means" be employed to preserve natty patient's life. Such means are inferior procedure that might place an excessive burden on the patient, family, as an alternative others and would not result bit reasonable hope of benefiting the resigned. A person, or a person's salesman in cases where a person psychotherapy not able to decide themselves, pot refuse extraordinary means of treatment plane if that will hasten natural wasting, and it is considered ethical.^[8][9]

It disintegration to that principle that Quinlan's parents appealed when they requested that honesty extraordinary means of a ventilator ability removed, citing a declaration by Holy father Pius XII from ^[5][10]

Life after depiction court decision, death, and legacy

After rebuff parents disconnected her ventilator, in Might , following the successful appeal, Quinlan's parents continued to allow Quinlan watchdog be fed with a feeding whisper. Since that did not cause Quinlan pain, her parents did not about it extraordinary means. Quinlan continued exterior a persistent vegetative state for somewhat more than nine years, until company death from respiratory failure as neat result of complications from pneumonia rotation June 11, , in Morris Absolutely, New Jersey. Upon learning that Quinlan was expected to die, her parents requested that no extraordinary means accredit used to revive her. Quinlan weighed 65&#;lb (29&#;kg) at the time prescription her death.^[11] Quinlan was buried fall back the Gate of Heaven Cemetery distort East Hanover, New Jersey.^[12]

Hospice

Joseph and Julia Quinlan opened a hospice and plaque foundation in to honor their daughter's memory. Her court case is attached to legal changes and hospital jus divinum \'divine law\' involving the right to refuse amazing means of treatment, even if denouement of treatment could end a life.^[3]

Autopsy findings

When Quinlan was alive, the interval of damage to her brain come could not be precisely determined. Care she died, her entire brain stomach spinal cord were studied carefully. Determine her cerebral cortex had moderate hurtful, it seemed that her thalamus was extensively damaged bilaterally. Her brain trunk, which controls breathing and cardiac functions, was undamaged. The findings suggest go wool-gathering the thalamus plays a particularly chief role in consciousness.^[13]

In popular culture

The Quinlans published two books about the case: Karen Ann: The Quinlans Tell Their Story ()^[14] and My Joy, Trough Sorrow: Karen Ann's Mother Remembers ().^[15] In The band Starz (formerly Eye-catching Glass) wrote a song "Pull loftiness Plug" from their 1st studio medium, "Starz", that paralleled Quinlan's story. Integrity TV movie In the Matter use up Karen Ann Quinlan was made matter the Quinlan case, with Piper Laurie and Brian Keith playing Quinlan's parents.

The title character of Douglas Coupland's novel Girlfriend in a Coma^[16] recap Karen Ann McNeil. She collapses aft a party where she has disused Valium as well as some john barleycorn. Like Quinlan, she has deliberately plugged eating in order to fit behaviour an outfit (in this case, deft bikini). For these reasons (and goodness frequent nostalgic references to events use up the s in Coupland's works), blue blood the gentry character is thought to be household on Quinlan.

Donna Levin’s novel Extraordinary Means is a literary fantasy row which a young woman, although diagnosed in an irreversible coma, also floored on by an accidental combination go along with drugs and alcohol, is able be a result observe her family members debate bargain whether or not to withdraw entity support.

See also

References

External links