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Legal Advice, Moral Paralysis and the Death of Samuel Linares

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2021

Lawrence J. Nelson  and
Ronald E. Cranford
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Extract

Legal advice lies close to the death of Samuel Linares, closer than it usually does to the deaths of the many who die every day in American hospitals. Samuel's parents wanted the attending physician to disconnect the ventilator of their permanently unconscious son and allow him to die, something they saw as right for their son and their family. But this never happened. Samuel was not allowed to meet the death he had so narrowly avoided in August of 1988 when he accidentally swallowed a balloon and choked. He did not die uneventfully after his parents and the clinicians caring for him had carefully deliberated about the personal, ethical and professional propriety of stopping the ventilator and made a responsible decision about his fate.

Instead, Rudy Linares had to ward off nurses and security guards with a handgun until he disconnected his son's ventilator and held him in his arms until he died. According to the attending physician, Dr. Goldman, “There was no ethical difference of opinion here. The physicians agreed that the child was in an irreversible coma and would not recover. There was no medical opposition to removing the ventilator. What we faced was a legal obstacle.” (Emphasis added.)

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , Winter 1989 , pp. 316 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1989

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