Karen Quinlan—The Case Study Analysis

This analysis focuses on the Karen Quinlan case study, putting it in an ethical framework, discussing the issues facing the persons concerned with euthanasia, and making recommendations. The case study revolves around Karen Quinlan, who fell severely ill and was hospitalised in 1975. Her parents requested to take her off from the life-support system to end her misery, but the doctors refused to comply. The case could be termed as the starting point of the right-to-die movement. The major parties involved in the case were Karen Quinlan, her parents, her doctors, and two courts. All of them faced some issues that were difficult to address. The article recommends giving everyone like Karen the judgement what the Supreme Court gave her.

Karen Quinlan—The Case Study
Analysis
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Introduction:
Karen Quinlan, an American woman, living in Pennsylvania, had fallen severely ill and was
hospitalised in 1975. She had gone into a coma and doctors declared that she had hardly any
chance of recovering. Despite the request from her parents, a court rejected their plea and Karen
spent 10 years in that comatose state before she died in 1985(the Guardian, 2018).This analysis
will focus on the case study of Karen Quinlan, and it will analyse the case study putting it in an
ethical framework. Details of the issues facing the persons concerned with theeuthanasiawill also
be discussed, and finally, recommendations will be made.
Statement of Case Fact:
On the 14th of April in 1975, Karen Quinlan collapsed after taking a mix of alcohol and sedatives
at a bar where she was partying with her friends. She was taken to a local hospital and was put
on ventilation. Her doctor Robert Morse examined her and in his court statement said she had
extensive brain damage and was comatose. Her adoptive parents asked the doctors treating Karen
to take her off from the life-support system to end her misery as she could never regain
consciousness. But the doctors, Robert Morse and Arshad Javed, refused to comply and
continued to keep this 21-year-old woman on ventilation and in a coma(Quinlan, 2018). There is
an argument that they had no legal or ethical right to take a patient off the life-support system.
They also feared they could be chargedwith murder as there were no legal provisions at that time
to end the life of a patient like this.
Karen’s adoptive father Joseph Quinlan, a devoutly Catholic, petitioned to a court in New Jersey
with a view to ending the comatose life of his daughter and said his religions supports ending life
like this. This case could be termed as the starting point of the right-to-die movement. Justice
Robert Muir Junior in his ruling placed the fate of Karen in the hands of the doctors and revoked
Joseph Quinlan’s guardianship on the 10th of November 1975. Karen’s parents then moved the
Supreme Court of New Jersey(Rothman, 2017). On March 13, 1976, the Supreme Court verdict
came, and it came in favour of Karen's parents. Joseph and Karen's mother Julia. The court
reappointed them as Karen's guardians and allow them to take her off ventilation. The court said
that allowing Karen to live like that would be a violation of her right to privacy as she needed
extraordinary measures like catheter, feeding tube, etc. But when she was taken off the ventilator
following the Supreme Court’s ruling, she stunned everyone by starting to breathe on her own.
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She continued to live like that, breathing but otherwise completely comatose until her death from
respiratory failure.
Discussion of the issues facing each participant:
The major parties involved in the case were Karen Quinlan, her parents, her doctors,and two
courts. All of them faced some issues that were difficult to address,to say the least. Karen, as a
young woman had a right to live a fulfilling life, at the same time she had a right to live a life on
her terms. But her medical condition was such that this second right she could not exercise. On
the other hand, she could not tell anyone whether she wanted to live or not, so a decision from
her was not available. Another point is, as the Supreme Court had pointed out, Karen had another
issue, and that is relating to her right to privacy(Riga, 2017). This privacy she was not getting in
the hospital setting as her medical care required extensive infringement on her privacy.
Karen’s parents also faced a number of issues. As parents, they did not want their daughter to die
as was made clear to their statement given to the SC that they had never wanted to remove the
feeding tubes and they took several months before moving the court. But they could not watch
their daughter’s wretched condition and complete violation of her right to privacy by her
treatment procedures.
The doctors also faced an issue of treating a patient whom they were convinced will never
recover consciousness(Lang & Seltzer, 2015). But due to the lack of legal allowance and their
medical ethics they could not agree to end her life by taking her off the life-support
system(Pence, 2015). The court faced a number of issues, and first of them was to decide what
Karen parents’ actual intention was. In his petition, Joseph said that he wanted and the first court
verdict points to it as it took Joseph's guardianship. The court also faced the issue of Karen's
right to privacy, and the SC judgement was based on this right.
Analysis using the ethical framework:
If the case study is analysed by putting it in a framework of deontological ethical principles, like
Kantian theory, the analysis reveals Everybody involved in this case, except Karen, faced some
strong ethical dilemmas(Daly, Gokhale, & Ramos-Estebanez, 2014). Simply put, deontological
ethical principles focus on the duty,not on the consequences of that action taken to do justice to
that duty. Karen’s parents though their duty were to end their beloved daughter’s misery and this
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ethical principlesay they were right as she not only living a comatose life but her privacy was
also being grossly violated. On the other hand, they could not decide whether ending her life was
their duty or not like her parents it was their duty to keep her alive that is why they asked the
doctor to remove the ventilator several months after Karen collapsed.
The doctors and courts also face tough ethical challenges in this ethical framework. The doctors,
as their medical ethics, says, though it was their duty to keep the comatose woman alive because
all symptoms of life had not left out of her. The lack of any legal framework for this kind of
death also asked them to keep Karen as she was(Aulisio, 2016). But they also could not decide
whether keeping her alive was their moral duty as their statements to courts supported that she
had to live on ventilation for the rest of her life and her privacy had to be violated due to the
nature of her treatment. The court also faced an ethical crisis as it could not decide what was
their duty, to order to end her life to uphold her right to privacy or whether to keep her alive as
judges it was their duty not to end an innocent's life.
Recommendations
Based on the analysis of the Karen Quinlan case study and an analysis of it from an ethical
standpoint, it seems that Supreme Court’s judgement was the most acceptable one. The analysis
revealed that no one, in this case, could take an irrefutable decision on this case. Neither the
parents, nor the doctors, nor the judges and unfortunately, nor Karen Quinlan herself. But
Karen’s state was actually violating two of her most important rights: her rights to lead her life
on her own terms and her right to privacy.From this, someone had to see that these rights are not
violated and SC did this task, and this analysis recommends to give everyone like Karen the
judgement what the SC gave her.
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Annotated Bibliography
Article 1
Aulisio, M.P., 2016. Why Did Hospital Ethics Committees Emerge in the US?. AMA journal of
ethics, 18(5), p.546.
This article was chosen because it focuses on one of the major development in the medical field
in the US, namely formulation of ethics committees in the country’s hospitals. The article gave
sharp focus on Karen Quinlan to show how this case played a major role in shaping the medical
history of the US and formulation the policy of installing ethical committees in all major
hospitals across the country.
The concept of ethical committees in hospitals came to the US policymakers before the 1970s,
even in the `80s, such committees were very few in numbers in that country. But suddenly the
number jumped, and almost 90% of the US hospitals had this committee by the end of 1990.
Some ‘landmark’ events caused this massive increment in number in such a short time, and the
most important of them was Karen Quilan’s case.
Article 2
Lang, J.A.,and Seltzer, M.M., 2015. Karen Ann Quinlan: Dying in the Age of Eternal Life; and
Death Dying and the Biological Revolution: Our Last Quest for Responsibility. DePaul Law
Review, 26(4), p.891.
This article covers in depth the ethical issue that arose during the Karen Quinlan case. Special
emphasis has been given to the moral and ethical responsibilities of physicians and the ethical
dilemmas that arise out of those responsibilities.
The decision of our life and death should be based on our personal style and not on theories and
ethics. In this new age of individualism, it is time to re-examine our views on death and to die. A
dying man cannot and should not be forced to live.
Article 3
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/20/when-life-is-a-fate-worse-than-death-assisted-
dying
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This article was chosen because it gives extensive coverage of the case facts and an analysis of
those facts in the light of ethical, moral, judicial and medical ethics and practices. It helps one to
clearly understand the significant questions related to this case like exactly what happened when
happened, who was involved and what they did and why.
Karen Quinlan lived two lives: the life before her collapsing and consequent hospitalisation and
the life as a comatose human being who, when living on a life-support system, did not know
whether she was living or was dead. The Karen Quinlan case was probably the most important
contributor to the right to die movement. Her parents, the doctors,and the judges all contributed
heavily to make it one of the most talked-about cases in the history of euthanasia.
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References
Aulisio, M. P. (2016). Why Did Hospital Ethics Committees Emerge in the US? AMA
journal of ethics , 18(55), 546.
Daly, B., Gokhale, S., & Ramos-Estebanez, C. (2014). Clinical and ethical judgment: a
profound dilemma. Neurology, 83(15), 1369.
Lang, J. A., & Seltzer, M. M. (2015). Karen Ann Quinlan: Dying in the Age of Eternal
Life; and Death Dying and the Biological Revolution: Our Last Quest for Responsibility.
DePaul Law Review, 26(4), 891.
Pence, G. E. (2015). Medical ethics: Accounts of ground-breaking cases. New York:
McGraw-Hill Education.
Quinlan, K. (2018). Emotion and moral purposes in higher education teaching: poetic
case examples of teacher experiences. Studies in Higher Education, 1-14.
Riga, P. J. (2017). Privacy and the Right to Die. The Catholic Lawyer, 26(2), 2.
Rothman, D. J. (2017). Strangers at the bedside: A history of how law and bioethics
transformed medical decision making. Routledge.
the Guardian. (2018). When life is a fate worse than death. Retrieved June 8, 2018, from
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/20/when-life-is-a-fate-worse-than-death-
assisted-dying
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