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Ann Thorac Surg 2003;76:1336
© 2003 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

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Correspondence

Legal consequences of disregarding the wishes of a patient

^a Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Legal Department, 2821 Route 22, Patterson, NY 12563, USA

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

To the Editor:

In their ethical discussions, Dr Sade [1] and Dr McKneally [2] err in their assumption that a surrogate decision maker has legal authority to override an advance directive of a formerly competent patient on the basis of nothing more than the surrogate’s belief that the patient "might have changed his mind." If that were all it took to invalidate a person’s express written instructions, all variety of legal documents (eg, wills, insurance policies, other contracts) could easily be nullified. On the contrary, such instruments—including health-care advance directives—cannot be disregarded or evaded with the ease and legal impunity suggested by the hypothetical case and apparently assumed by Drs McKneally and Sade.

In the first place, neither next-of-kinship nor surrogacy in general gives a surrogate decision maker discretion to . . . [Full Text of this Article]