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In the matter of karen ann quinlan

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Quinlan, Karen Ann

On April 15, 1975, Karen Ann Quinlan, seventeen years old, presumably ingested barbiturates and alcohol at a party. She became comatose and experienced two periods of apnea (absence of breathing) of about fifteen minutes each, which resulted in irreversible brain damage. She was placed on a respirator and was fed nutrition and fluids by a gastrostomy tube. Her parents were told that she was in a persistent vegetative state from which there was no hope of recovery. Her physician, Robert Morse, considered the ventilator medically appropriate. He claimed that allowing a person in a persistent vegetative state to die was in violation of the professional standard of the time. Quinlan was still in a vegetative state five months later. The electroencephalogram (EEG) showed no signs of brain function, and she did not respond to verbal, visual, or even painful stimuli.

The Quinlan family priest told the parents that they had no moral obligation to continue extraordinary means (the respirator) to support their daughter's life, but that artificial feeding and fluids wer

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Matter of Quinlan

Print this case study here: Case Study – Matter of Quinlan

Supreme Court of New Jersey 1976, 355 A. 2d 647

Summary (Facts)

Karen Ann Quinlan, a twenty-two-year-old who ingested a harmful mix of drugs and alcohol, suffered two fifteen-minute periods of interrupted breathing which left her in a chronic vegetative state without any cognitive functions.

Evidence in the case included statements the patient made earlier referring to her “distaste for continuance of life by extraordinary medical procedures.” These statements were deemed by the court as remote, impersonal and lacking trial “probative weight.”

Mr. Cruzan, the patient’s father, sought appointment as her guardian along with the authority to terminate “all extraordinary medical procedures.” This petition was opposed by the doctors, the hospital, the prosecutor, and the guardian ad litem.

The trial court refused the order to withdraw life-supporting apparatus. The father/guardian appealed.

Holding

The State’s interest to maintain life weaken,

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Karen Ann Quinlan

American medical–legal case

Karen Ann Quinlan (March 29, 1954 – June 11, 1985) was an American woman who became an important figure in the history of the right to die controversy in the United States.

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

Eventually a court ruled that the ventilator could be withdrawn. However, she continued to breathe on her own. She survived another nine years in a persistent vegetative state.

Quinlan's case continues to raise important questions in moral theology, bioethics, euthanasia, legal guardianship and civil rights. Her case has affected the practice of medicine and law around the world. A significant outcome of her case was t