Surrogate Health Care Decisions & Ethical Issues

Shari A. Levitan (partner, Holland & Knight LLP, Boston) and Helen Adrian (associate, Holland & Knight LLP, Atlanta) have recently published their article entitled Brave New World: Ethical Issues Involving Surrogate Health Care Decisions, Prob. & Prop., Jan./Feb. 2006, at 30.

Here are the main ethical issues discussed in the article:

• What happens if the patient objects?
• What happens if the decision benefits someone other than the patient?
• What happens if someone other than the principal/patient objects?
• What happens if the surrogate and the person financially responsible do not agree on the health care decision?

Here is the conclusion of their article:

Health care proxy statutes and other sources of authority give the surrogate health care decision maker the power to make decisions, but statutes and case law have not kept pace with advances in medicine and science and new applications of existing science that blur the line between treatment of the patient and procedures that benefit others.  Clients, surrogates, and the attorneys who advise them must consider ethics, as well as the law, to resolve the tough new questions that science presents.