March 31, 1976, 50 years ago: The Supreme Court of the State of New Jersey rules in the case of In re Quinlan, that Karen Ann Quinlan, a hospital patient in a persistent vegetative state, can be disconnected from her ventilator.
Karen had been born on March 29, 1954 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Roxbury, Morris County, New Jersey. She graduated from Morris Catholic High School in Denville, and worked several jobs, moving to a house in Byram, Sussex County, with 2 roommates.
On April 15, 1975, she attended a friend's birthday party at a local bar. Having eaten almost nothing for 2 days, as part of a crash diet, she got drunk and took a Valium pill. Her friends took her home, and discovered her not breathing. She was taken to a hospital in Newton, Sussex County, but never regained consciousness. Unresponsive, she was taken to St. Clare's Hospital in Denville, which was better able to handle her condition: A persistent vegetative state.
After doctors refused the request of her parents, Joseph and Julia Quinlan, to disconnect her ventilator, her parents filed suit to get her disconnected. They believed that her still being connected constituted extraordinary means of prolonging her life.
Interestingly, both sides used Catholic theology to make their cases: The defense, that life must be preserved at all costs; the plaintiffs, that "extraordinary measures" to preserve life are a contradiction of God's will, citing a Papal message from Pope Pius XII in 1957.
The State Supreme Court ruled in the parents' failure, and the respirator was disconnected. Karen's feeding tube was not: Her parents did not consider that to be "extraordinary measures." As a result, Karen lived on until June 11, 1985. She had been in a coma for 10 years. Her case has affected the practice of medicine and law around the world. A significant outcome of her case was the development of formal ethics committees in hospitals, nursing homes and hospices.
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