Life or death essays

Life or death essays Life and Death- In the Matter of Karen Ann Quinlan Today, modern medicine is nothing short of a miracle, and almost every living creature in our civilized world depend on the great wealth of knowledge occupants in this field of work contain. Today with the advancement of medicine, doctors can take patients from being close to death, and revive, or sustain them, through circumstances that otherwise would have killed them. Around the early seventies many major technological and medical advances began to arise in the U.S. During this time period many more people began to have long-term hospitalizations thus making people who would have otherwise died before, live longer. This happened to be the case with Karen Ann Quinlan of New Jersey in 1975. Karen had been in a comatose state for many months, living off of her vital organs and a respirator. Because medicine and technology were advancing so rapidly in the United States, many people had problems at first with the facts of how ethical this new technology was, and how effective it would be to sustain life for long periods of time. Another problem many people faced was the ethical problem of sustaining a person in a vegetative state. Because technology could sustain someone who had become vegetative for long periods of time, was it morally right to allow a person to continue living if they could not understand or communicate with the world? This was the question that New Jersey superior court had to rule on in the case of Karen Quinlan. There were two parties involved in this case, the plaintiff, Joseph Thomas Quinlan, and the defense, the court, which stood for Karens rights as an individual to remain on life support until she died of natural causes. Joseph Quinlan is called to the stand to testify and explain his reasoning behind his decision to ask the court to order the hospital to remove his daughter from her respirator. The defense attorney first begins questioning J...