Paula Tironi, JD, LLM and Monique M. Karaganis, MD
While parents often have legal authority to make decisions regarding pediatric palliative care, federal and state statutory and case laws, like CAPTA, impose significant restrictions on that authority.
People with mental illness or a degenerative mental disease have special protections under the law when entering into contracts or other binding documents.
A review of a landmark case that determined why and under what circumstances antipsychotic medications can be administered to incarcerated patients with mental illness against their will.
The ongoing anthrax vaccination case, Doe v Rumsfeld, tests whether the military can require participation in and punish refusal of a vaccination program while waiving informed consent.
Physicians are held legally responsible if patients are harmed by not receiving the care that is required, even when the restriction of that care is imposed by a third-party payor.
Although members of the medical profession are divided on the issue of physician-assisted suicide, they should continue to responsibly advance the discourse on end-of-life care through use of the media and the policies of physician membership organizations.