Abstract
A woman brings her elderly father to the hospital. He has refused to eat for several days and is dehydrated. The doctors feed and rehydrate him intravenously, but as soon as he regains consciousness he pulls out the tubes and again refuses to eat. The man suffers from dementia. His daughter does not know what to do. Should she have him tied to the bed and force-fed, or should she watch him starve to death? His doctor sits her down and tells her that he will make the medical decisions for her father. I watch her relax at the thought of not having to make the decision.
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© 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Sturman, R.L. (2003). A Matter of Life and Death. In: Six Lives in Jerusalem. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1052-8_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1052-8_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-3777-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-1052-8
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