Are we violating the human rights of patients in a persistent vegetative state - Essay Example

Other research objectives identified are: signs and symptoms, causative factors, legal preliminaries, etc. Using these research objectives, we have confirmed the findings through a wide choice of case studies. Analysis: The case studies used are 1)Tony Bland 2)Terri Schiavo 3)Leslie Burke 4)Glass v. UK. These case studies have gone into the depth of how and why it is necessary to have proper legal safeguard mechanisms to avoid human rights violations, because of various controversies that are inseparable from the very findings of PVS.

Conclusion: The case studies, backed with solid strength of data in Literature Review, clearly confirm that there is a lot of possibility for human rights abuse in PVS, and relevant safeguard mechanisms have been suggested to alleviate concerns. Ch 1: Literature Review The aim of this dissertation is to determine the ethical and legal repercussions of a highly sensitive topic: Persistent Vegetative State, or PVS as we’ll refer to it throughout the paper.

This topic has generated a lot of controversy in recent times, because it comes on the fence between the ethical perspectives of pro-life advocates and euthanasia supporters, which are two grossly different factions in this debate over what would constitute a better alternative for the patient itself. From the very outset, our interest lies in picturing an appropriate controversial definition of PVS. The term was first coined by Scottish neurosurgeon Bryan Jennet and American neurologist Fred Plum to describe “that condition in a patient’s physical and physiological well-being, that essentially makes them unconscious and unaware of their surroundings,