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Title
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In re Quinlan
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Date
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1976
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Description
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In 1976, the Supreme Court of New Jersey decided In re Quinlan, a landmark case concerning Karen Ann Quinlan, life-sustaining treatment, guardianship, privacy, prognosis, and the withdrawal of mechanical ventilation.
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ABP identifier
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ABP-E-0011
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Historical significance
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Quinlan helped move questions about life-sustaining treatment from bedside practice into public law and clinical ethics. The decision addressed family and surrogate authority, privacy, medical judgment, and multidisciplinary ethics consultation, and it connected emerging end-of-life ethics to earlier debates over neurological criteria for death.
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Intellectual stream
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Clinical ethics & professionalism
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Law & public policy
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Verification status
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Verified
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Evidence confidence
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High
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Open question
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How should the repository trace the genealogy from the 1968 Harvard report through Quinlan to later cases such as Cruzan and subsequent clinical practices concerning withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment?