GIVEN THE MAKEUP of the Supreme Court, this is supposed to be a time when conservative judges are reining in some of the 'rights' established by liberals over the past four decades.
Yet there is a growing push in medical, legislative, and legal circles -- both liberal and conservative -- to recognize an expansive new right that some are describing as 'medical self-defense.' The movement is rooted in a desire to help patients who have run out of options. Some medical experts, including Dr. Emil Freireich, director of a leukemia research program at the University of Texas, have called on the Food and Drug Administration to let terminally ill patients try unapproved drugs that might offer their last chance at survival. ...
The decision could have sweeping implications. A right to medical self-defense, some legal scholars argue, implies that there is a right to offer cash for human organs, if one is dying or suffering -- a practice currently banned. Such a right could even force the courts to overturn any federal ban on stem-cell research because, these scholars argue, the government's interest in protecting a 10-cell embryo could not trump the right of a Parkinson's patient to save himself. If you can shoot a man who breaks into your house at 1 a.m., they ask, why can't you try an unproven drug or purchase an organ
Actually, marijuana aside, I can imagine this argument appealing to members of the current Court majority. Rich and poor alike have the right to purchase (or sell) organs, just as they do to sleep under bridges.
I have my reservations, which increasingly feels like a kiss of death.
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