END OF LIFE: WHO DECIDES AND HOW?

When: Wednesday, January 18, 2006; 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Where: House of the Association, 42 West 44th Street.

You are invited to a discussion about the legal, medical and ethical issues involved in counseling patients and their families who face end-of-life decisions.

Medical science has enabled us to live far beyond the life expectancies of 50 years ago, but with this good news comes the bad: many of us will not be living well, suffering from physical and cognitive failures that result in pain and poor quality of life. Individuals have won the legal right to refuse unwanted medical treatment and do not lose that right when they become incapacitated. But in New York, the courts and the legislature have taken a very conservative approach and permit the patient’s right to refuse treatment only when there is clear and convincing evidence of the patient’s wishes.
Because physicians have little time to discuss how decisions are made at the end of life and the implications of “health care proxies” and “living wills” (and don’t get paid by Medicare or health insurance for such discussions), lawyers have become a primary source of information and counseling about end-of-life decision making. This program will address the question of how lawyers should advise clients about the law and the steps they should take to secure their rights for themselves and for their family members.

Some of the questions that will be answered are:
• What is a living will? A health care proxy?
• Should the client have both?
• Can a living will cause problems?
• What is the standard to decide if a client has the capacity to make their own decisions?
• Does a spouse or a child have any inherent right to make end-of-life medical decisions?
• Is artificial nutrition and hydration a medical procedure that can be refused?
• What guides the decisions of the health care agent?
• Who protects the patient if the health care agent acts against the patient’s wishes?
• What happens if the doctor disagrees with a decision by the patient or health care agent?

MODERATOR:
JESSE MARGOLIN, Becker Ross, LLP.

SPEAKERS:
PETER J. STRAUSS, Senior Counsel, Epstein Becker & Green PC; Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School.

DIANE E. MEIER, M.D., Director, Center to Advance Palliative Care; Director, Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute; Professor of Medical Ethics, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.

JEFFREY BLUSTEIN, Ph.D., Professor of Bioethics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

MICHAEL A. KLEIN, Senior Attorney, New York State Task Force on Life and the Law.

About the Association
The Association of the Bar of the City of New York (www.nycbar.org) was founded in 1870, and since then has been dedicated to maintaining the high ethical standards of the profession, promoting reform of the law, and providing service to the profession and the public.