Superintendent of Belchertown State School v. Saikewicz
Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
370 N.E.2d 417 (1977)
Relevant factsFree
Joseph Saikewicz, profoundly retarded and noncommunicative for most of his life, contracted a fatal form of cancer typically treated with chemotherapy requiring informed consent that he could not personally give; a lower court ruled that treatment should be withheld, and the case reached the Supreme Judicial Court for review of the framework used to make that decision.
IssueFree
Whether a court, in deciding whether to order life-prolonging treatment for an incompetent patient, should attempt to determine what the specific patient would have wanted under the same circumstances if he were competent.