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Still, the case in question presents a difficult ethical question as the patient is unconscious and his state is quickly deteriorating. With no identification, no legal papers confirming his end of life wishes, and no family to contact, this makes for the perfect storm in patient autonomy ethics. What if doctors were to honor his wishes based off a tattoo, only to find out those were not his true wishes. It is important to note that the patient was found just outside the hospital. But if the doctors do resuscitate the patient and it is against his wishes, are they breaking an ethical (and possibly legal) code?

The first legal acceptance of a D.N.R. request was in 1975 after the court case In re Quinlan. Karen Quinlan, a 21-year-old girl from New Jersey had been placed into a vegetative state after a night of heavy drinking and taking tranquilizers. The parents of Karen Quinlan won the case and were allowed the ordered removal of the ventilator that was keeping her alive. Years after this case, in 1991, Congress passed the Patient Self-Determination Act which mandated that hospitals honor a patient’s wishes about their healthcare.

In Florida, where this case happened, Do Not Resuscitate orders are required outside hospitals to be signed by both a physician and the patient. Inside hospitals however, doctors can speak to a patient or the patient’s family and friends to determine the patients wishes. In most states, Do Not Resuscitate orders require either both the patient and doctors signature and may require an attorney on either side to write the order. D.N.R. orders are traditionally written on a yellow paper to make them unmistakable.

A man is discovered unconscious outside a Miami hospital and in deteriorating condition. When brought to the emergency room, doctors remove the man’s shirt to resuscitate him, only to find a tattoo on his chest that reads “Do Not Resuscitate”.  The man was found with no identification on him and no family or friends with him; there was no way to tell if his tattoo expressed his true wishes. The doctors discovered the patient had an infection that led to septic shock, which causes organ failure and extremely low blood pressure. The doctors had to decide soon as the patient would die, but how could they know if the tattoo really showed the patients wishes? What if the tattoo was very old and the patient hadn’t had the chance to remove it? The doctors decided initially to give the man a breathing mask, but before putting the man on any kind of life support the doctors spoke to an ethics consultant.

In “WHOSE BODY IS IT, ANYWAY?”, Gawande discusses the thin and often blurred line between a patient’s autonomy and a doctor’s ability to mediate or even make decisions for patients when they believe the patient is making a mistake. Gawande discusses many situations where a patient’s decisions and what he as a doctor recommends are at odds. Gawande admits it is not always clear what to do in these situations, but states that the current view in the medical world is to allow the patients to decide (212). One situation that Gawande describes involves the patients referred to as Lazaroff, who has an incurable cancer in his spinal cord. The cancer has caused Lazaroff to lose control and ability in his left leg and may progress to paralysis. Lazaroff has only a few weeks to live according to the doctors, however, he still speaks about soon returning to work (209). Perhaps Lazaroff is making light of the situation, but much more likely in his situation, he misunderstands his situation and that his lease on life has been cut short.

The flowering plant selected was Camellia Japonica. C. Japonica was selected as it was a large tree and was in the first room of the Durfee Conservatory. Ease of access to the subject of the experiment seemed to be an important factor as it would be difficult to replicate the methods if the person following them could not find the plant. Also, this experiment was performed in the winter, so using flowering plants outside was out of the question. Choosing a plant in the Durfee Conservatory meant that the plant would be there for the replicator in the same location and in a location easy to find.

In Spring 2018, as part of the Writing in Biology Course at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, pictures were taken of  a flowering plant and a close-up of one of that plants flowers. Using these pictures and a map locating the flowering plants origins, a multi-panel figure was then made on the program Inkscape.  Methods were written to describe in detail how the multi-panel figure was made as well as what was photographed and how it was photographed. The methods were then shared with another student in the class for them to replicate what was done.

In Spring 2018, as part of the Writing in Biology Course at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, pictures were taken of  a flowering plant and a close-up of one of that plants flowers. Using these pictures and a map locating the flowering plants origins, a multi-panel figure was then made on the program Inkscape.  Methods were written to describe in detail how the multi-panel figure was made as well as what was photographed and how it was photographed. The methods were then shared with another student in the class for them to replicate what was done.

-        Seed Example Revisited: Pavlischek refers again to the seed example, where he argues that women know the risk and responsibility they may have to bear by having sex. If women know this risk and they take it, Pavlischek argues, a man cannot be forced to be minimally decent. All a farther is requires to legitimately abandon his child is a goof faith declaration of non-responsibility prior to the child’s birth.

1.      Meilaender’s View of Thomson’s argument: Pavlischek refers to another writer, Meilaender, who describes Thomson’s analogies to be inappropriate for the discussion of abortion.

-        Meilaender argues that Thompson’s various analogies used to explain women’s right to choose distorts the issue of abortion. In the violinist example, Meilaender argues that the analogy paints the fetus as a parasite rather than a person.

-        Meilaender argues that rather than a parasite, there are many cases of communal dependence in natures and that a fetus represents the use of creativity and self-spending in the female’s body.

-          Pavlischek uses Meilaender’s dissection of Thomson’s view in which the mother-fetus relationship is a brute biological fact, where the mother bears no special responsibility or care for the child. Pavlischek states then it can be said that if the man does not want the child, he too can view the fetus as a brute biological fact and nothing else. Thus, the man bears no special responsibility to a child which he does not want to have.

1.      Four Cases of Parent’s Decisions: Here Pavlischek discusses four different cases in which the mother and father either do or do not confer human significance or assume a special responsibility for a fetus that the mother is carrying.

-        Pavlischek makes importance of the fact that in the violinist example, it is the woman who is hooked up to the violinist and in the seed example, it is the woman’s house. She makes no mention however of the man’s role in these situations or his decisions. Thomson argues that in both of her prior examples, the women bears no special responsibility and thus carries no moral weight in her decision.

-        Pavlischek states that Thomson specifically does not mention situation 4, in which the women does not wish to have an abortion, but the man does. Pavlischek argues that given Thomson’s reasoning, a father who doesn’t want the child, cannot be forced to contribute, or assume a special responsibility.

Henry Fonda Example: Pavlischek refers to Thomson’s example where a man could simply heal her by the touch of his hand. In the example, Fonda is initially across the country and for him to travel to help her would be the act of a good Samaritan. However, Thomson presents the situation again where Fonda is across the room. In the modified example, Thomson argues that for Fonda to help her would require him to be only minimally decent, yet he is still not required to help at all. Pavlischek uses this example in terms of a man’s contribution to a child he did not want. Pavlischek argues that if a man were to state he did not want a child while it was still a fetus, the minimally decent thing to do would provide at least half the cost of an abortion as a good faith offer. However, Pavlischek explains that even this good faith offer should not be required by law with regards to Thomson’s argument, and that it is merely an act of a minimally decent Samaritan