Informed Demand for "Non-Beneficial" Medical Treatment

Abstract

In the spring of 1991, the Hennepin County [Minn.] Medical Center went to court in an attempt to determine if physicians in its employ were obligated legally to continue treatment they believed was no longer beneficial to their patient, an elderly woman in a persistent vegetative state. The husband and other family members of Helga Wanglie insisted that she be maintained on a respirator against the judgment of her physicians. Wanglie died within days of the trial court's decision (