What can qualify as a terminal illness with respect to assisted suicide? As an example, HIV used to be considered a terminal disease by doctors. Nowadays, there are treatments which extend life significantly for HIV patients, and doctors consider it to be a manageable disease through treatment rather than terminal. Does the law have an explicit definition of terminal disease? Or what qualifies a disease to be used as a reason for assisted suicide in relevant jurisdiction?
The law in Washington, RCW 70.245, redined "terminal illness" as an incurable and irreversible disease that has been medically confirmed and will, within reasonable medical judgment, produce death within six months. California law and Hawaii law say the same thing In Oregon, under ORS 127.505, the relevant term is "terminal condition", defines as a health condition in which death is imminent irrespective of treatment, and where the application of life-sustaining procedures or the artificial administration of nutrition and hydration serves only to postpone the moment of death of the principal. The law of The Netherlands is less restrictive, and does not involve "terminal" conditions. The most relevant condition from article 2 is that there must be a finding that "the patient's suffering is unbearable with no prospect of improvement" (plus, there are informed consent and a second opinion standards to be met). The Canadian law in §241.2 requires that "they have a grievous and irremediable medical condition". That means, specifically, that (a) they have a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability; (b) they are in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability; (c) that illness, disease or disability or that state of decline causes them enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable to them and that cannot be relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable; and (d) their natural death has become reasonably foreseeable, taking into account all of their medical circumstances, without a prognosis necessarily having been made as to the specific length of time that they have remaining. Simply having been exposed to a virus, or even contracting the disease AIDS, does not qualify under the law. At later points in the progression of the diseases, it could – depending on jurisdiction.
It's impractical to say what the law of Guyana was in 1978, but we can substitute criminal law from 1998 and assume that there would be substantial overlap. Suicide is still a crime, as is murder and while many people committed suicide, many also died at at hands of others. Whether or not Jones committed any murders, he was an access before the fact, and can be treated as a principal (Title 3), and for conspiracy to commit a felony (murder). Under §96, conseling or aiding in suicide is a felony punishable by life imprisonment. The Heaven's Gate suicides took place in California, where suicide is not a crime. However, it is a felony to aid, advise, or encourage another to commit suicide. As a backup, following the model of Michelle Carter's conviction (appeal denied Mass Supreme Court, petition to SCOTUS, cert denied), he might be charged with involuntary manslaughter, although prosecutors would have had to think of that angle (encouraging suicide is not a crime in Massachussetts, thus the need to be creative in prosecution).
To the best of my knowledge, there never has been any US law which authorizes killing or executing someone simply because of their low intelligence or mental illness. The arguments have been over cases where people were accused and convicted of serious, even horrific, crimes, but were sufficiently low in intelligence that it was argued that they would not understand why they were being executed, or even could not form the criminal intent required for a valid conviction. I never saw any news story or advocacy piece, even from the most passionate advocates of preventing such executions, that said or implied that people were being executed just because of low intelligence. Some may have suggested that comparable criminals of higher intelligence were not as likely to be executed. If any publication claimed the people were being executed just because of low intelligence, who were not convicted criminals, it was incorrect, and I would like to known what publication that might have been. However, there was a time in the US, not so very long ago, when coercive actions were taken against people solely because of their alleged low intelligence. I refer to Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927) a US Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a state law providing for the compulsory sterilization of the &quot;unfit&quot;, including the intellectually disabled, &quot;for the protection and health of the state&quot; did not violate the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment. The decision by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes included the passage: We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. and went on to say: Three generations of imbeciles are enough. The Wikipedia article linked above says that Buck's lawyer was a member of the Board of the mental institution that issued the order of sterilization, and may have intentionally done a poor job of arguing the case. The late Stephen Jay Gould, in his essay &quot;Carrie Buck's Daughter&quot; (published in Natural History, July 1984, reprinted as essay 20 in The Flamingo's Smile, 1987, and available online) wrote: As scholars and reporters visited Carrie Buck and her sister, what a few experts had known all along became abundantly clear to everyone. Carrie Buck was a woman of obviously normal intelligence. For example, Paul A. Lombardo of the School of Law at the University of Virginia, and a leading scholar of the Buck v. Bell case, wrote in a letter to me: As for Carrie, when I met her she was reading newspapers daily and joining a more literate friend to assist at regular bouts with the crossword puzzles. She was not a sophisticated woman, and lacked social graces, but mental health professionals who examined her in later life confirmed my impressions that she was neither mentally ill nor retarded. ... When we understand why Carrie Buck was committed in January 1924, we can finally comprehend the hidden meaning of her case and its message for us today. The silent key, again and as always, is her daughter Vivian, born on March 28, 1924, and then but an evident bump on her belly. Carrie Buck was one of several illegitimate children borne by her mother, Emma. She grew up with foster parents, J.T. and Alice Dobbs, and continued to live with them, helping out with chores around the house. She was apparently raped by a relative of her foster parents, then blamed for her resultant pregnancy. Almost surely, she was (as they used to say) committed to hide her shame (and her rapist’s identity), not because enlightened science had just discovered her true mental status. In short, she was sent away to have her baby. Her case never was about mental deficiency; it was always a matter of sexual morality and social deviance. ... ... She [Carrie's daughter Vivian, the crucial &quot;third generation&quot;] was a perfectly normal, quite average student, neither particularly outstanding nor much troubled. In those days before grade inflation, when C mean “good, 81-87” (as defined on her report card) rather than barely scraping by, Vivian Dobbs received A’s and B’s for deportment and C’s for all academic subjects but mathematics (which was always difficult for her, and where she scored D) during her first term in Grade 1A, from September 1930 to January 1931. She improved during her second term in lB, meriting an A in deportment, C in mathematics, and B in all other academic subjects; she was on the honor roll in April 1931 Gould also notes that sterilizations were performed at the same institution, under the same law, until 1972, for a total of over 4,000 cases at that institution alone. That is what US jurisprudence has in fact done to people alleged to be &quot;feeble-minded&quot;.
would this be illegal in the U.S.A.? This would almost certainly fail under the US Constitutions 8th Amendment as being a &quot;cruel and unusual punishment&quot;: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted While the inmate has been sentenced to execution, they are still afforded a lot of protection and are entitled to a stay of execution at any point (which is why there is typically an open telephone line to the state governor etc right up to the point at which the execution starts). Being deliberately put in harms way to catch a killer just because they have been sentenced to execution would be both a cruel and an unusual punishment.
An adult is normally assumed to be competent to enter into a contract unless there is some reason to think otherwise. It is not usual to demand evidence of competency unless there is something in the appearance or actions of a party that raises such a question, or something about that party, such as a history of mental illness, known to the other party, that raises such a question. I have heard of a party being medically examined just before signing an important document, to provide evidence of competence, but generally in connection with a will, and generally when the signer is elderly and in poor physical condition, and even then such a procedure is rare. If competence is disputed, medical evidence is required to resolve the question, or more exactly to establish lack of competence. In the absence of such evidence, competence will be presumed. That was the conclusion of the MA Supreme Court in FRANCES M. SPARROW vs. DAVID D. DEMONICO &amp; another, 461 Mass. 322* (2011). The court held: without medical evidence or expert testimony that the mental condition interfered with the party's understanding of the transaction, or her ability to act reasonably in relation to it, the evidence will not be sufficient to support a conclusion of incapacity. It was a significant part of the court's reasoning in that case that a reasonable person might well have entered into the agreement in question, and that the party was represented by a lawyer, and acted in accord with the lawyer's advice. That does not, however, seem to be a requirement; merely additional evidence of the reasonableness of the action.
Can you always ask for an independent genetic testing when you are asked by the court to support your wife's or your partners children? No. Only sometimes. (Literally, you can always ask, but sometimes the answer will be clearly &quot;no&quot;, as a matter of law.) Some presumptions of paternity are conclusive (either immediately or after a statute of limitations to contest paternity expires) and can't be overcome by contrary genetic evidence. Other presumptions of paternity are rebuttable. The specifics vary in important details from state to state. The theory behind the conclusive presumption is primarily that the presumed parent in those circumstances becomes the psychological parent, and it is not in the best interests of the child to dislodge a psychological parent, even if that parent is not a biological parents. Put another way, a conclusive presumption is really part of the definition of what a father is under the law. Several other answers at Law.SE have addressed this in the context of specific U.S. states. An answer here considers California law and another answers the question under New York law.
This might be legal to do with patients in some places, but it is probably not legal to do in general, although it might be hard to enforce the laws prohibiting this conduct against a provider in Pakistan. Different countries and sub-national governments regulate providing therapy differently. Some don't regulate it all, so you would only have to comply with the law of Pakistan on the subject, if any. Other places require an occupational license to provide therapy, and in those case, the law of the place where the patient resides could apply that licensure requirement based upon where the patient resides, where the therapist is located when the service is provided, or by some other rules. You would have to determine this on a jurisdiction by jurisdiction basis to be legal. Many jurisdictions also have VAT or GST taxes that would apply to fees collected for therapy services provided to someone in their jurisdiction, and this would also be a compliance issue if there was fee for the therapy. As a practical matter, you would also have to consider if there was any meaningful way that you could be punished for providing therapy services or not paying taxes in particular jurisdictions where some patients might reside or be receiving your app's services. If there was no meaningful remedy for violating those laws against your company in Pakistan, you might decide to ignore those laws because you could.
I'm not a lawyer or a medical professional, but on Wikipedia's page about DNR, we see the following quote: In the United States the documentation is especially complicated in that each state accepts different forms, and advance directives and living wills are not accepted by EMS as legally valid forms. If a patient has a living will that states the patient wishes to be DNR but does not have an appropriately filled out state sponsored form that is co-signed by a physician, EMS will attempt resuscitation. Based on this, I would hazard the guess that you can't treat anything other than those forms as legally binding, as they even ignore a living will without that state's form.