3. Medical Diagnosis: Our Right to Know the Truth

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Contents V
3. Contributors IX
4. Introduction XI
5. Part One. Truthtelling
6. 1. Do Cancer Patients Want to Be Told? 3
7. 2. What to Tell Cancer Patients: A Study of Medical Attitudes 9
8. 3. Medical Diagnosis: Our Right to Know the Truth 26
9. 4. Truth and the Physician 42
10. Part Two. Determining Death
11. 5. Death: Process or Event? 57
12. 6. Death as an Event: A Commentary on Robert Morison 70
13. 7. A Definition of Irreversible Coma 82
14. 8. Refinements in Criteria for the Determination of Death: An Appraisal 90
15. 9. A Statutory Definition of the Standards for Determining Human Death: An Appraisal and a Proposal 103
16. 10. Tucker v. Lower 125
17. Part Three. Allowing to Die
18. Infants
19. 11. Moral and Ethical Dilemmas in the Special-Care Nursery 133
20. 12. Mongolism, Parental Desires, and the Right to Life 145
21. 13. To Save or Let Die: The Dilemma of Modern Medicine 173
22. 14. Maine Medical Center v. Houle 185
23. Adults
24. 15. On (Only) Caring for the Dying 189
25. 16. Prolonging Life 226
26. 17. A Patient’s Decision to Decline Lifesaving Medical Treatment: Bodily Integrity versus the Preservation of Life 241
27. 18. In the Matter of KAREN QUINLAN, An Alleged Incompetent 271
28. Part Four. Euthanasia
29. 19. An Alternative to the Ethic of Euthanasia 281
30. 20. Should There Be a Legal Right to Die? 297
31. 21. Justifying the Final Solution 308
32. 22. Deciding for Yourself: The Objections 320
33. 23. Ethics and Euthanasia 348
34. Part Five. Suicide
35. 24. Preventing Suicide 363
36. 25. The Ethics of Suicide 374
37. 26. Philosophical and Ethical Considerations of Suicide Prevention 387
38. Index 401