Claire Conroy and Karen Quinlan will be forever linked by the dubious distinction of having their medical care the subject of a landmark decision from the New Jersey Supreme Court. Quinlan is well known, her high-school yearbook picture a symbol of the perplexing problems occasioned by modem medicine's power to rescue from death some who can never be aware of life. In the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision (1), Karen Quinlan's right to privacy (more accurately, her right t o determine what treatments she would receive), was held to outweigh the public's interest in the preservation of each human life. The authority to determine what Karen Quinlan would have wanted was granted to her father, and he was explicitly authorized to have her respirator discontinued once her prognosis of permanent unconsciousness was confirmed by a “hospital ethics committee”, even though her physician felt that this might well precipitate her death. The court's decision was the first time that a state's highest court acknowledged that some forms of life-sustaining medical treatment are not, from the patient's own perspective, beneficial or necessary.
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