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Full-Text Articles in Law
Blood Transfusions, Jehovah’S Witnesses, And The American Patients’ Rights Movement, Charles Baron
Blood Transfusions, Jehovah’S Witnesses, And The American Patients’ Rights Movement, Charles Baron
Charles H. Baron
The litigation to protect Jehovah’s Witnesses from unwanted blood transfusions, which their theology considers a violation of the biblical prohibition against drinking blood, has produced important changes in both the right to refuse treatment and in the preferred treatment methods of all patients. This article traces the evolution of the rights of competent medical patients in the United States to refuse medical treatment. It also discusses the impact this litigation has had on the medical community’s realization that blood transfusions were neither as safe nor as medically necessary as medical culture posited.
Competency And Common Law: Why And How Decision-Making Capacity Criteria Should Be Drawn From The Capacity-Determination Process, Charles Baron
Competency And Common Law: Why And How Decision-Making Capacity Criteria Should Be Drawn From The Capacity-Determination Process, Charles Baron
Charles H. Baron
Determining competence to request physician-assisted suicide should be no more difficult than determining competence to refuse life-prolonging treatment. In both cases, criteria and procedures should be developed out of the process of actually making capacity determinations; they should not be promulgated a priori. Because patient demeanor plays a critical role in capacity determinations, it should be made part of the record of such determinations through greater use of video- and audiotapes.
On Knowing One's Chains And Decking Them With Flowers: Limits On Patient Autonomy In 'The Silent World Of Doctor And Patient', Charles Baron
On Knowing One's Chains And Decking Them With Flowers: Limits On Patient Autonomy In 'The Silent World Of Doctor And Patient', Charles Baron
Charles H. Baron
In this article Professor Baron continues the debate started by Jay Katz in his book "The Silent World of Doctor and Patient" on the necessity of exploring further patients' reasons for refusing treatment.