Brophy v. New England Sinai Hospital, Inc.

We are asked to decide whether the substituted judgment of a person in a persistent vegetative state that the artificial maintenance of his nutrition and hydration be discontinued shall be honored. The effectuation of the ward’s wishes is supported by his wife-guardian and his family, but is opposed by his attending physicians and the defendant hospital. We are faced again with a case where “[ajdvances in medical science have given doctors greater control over the time and nature of death” and where physicians have developed a “range of options ... to postpone death irrespective of the effect…