The assumptions underlying the SUPPORT study may be incorrect. Informed patients may want interventions that other people regard as inappropriately aggressive.

Decisions on providing or withholding care for incompetent patients were traditionally made jointly by physicians and family members. Living wills represent a second approach, and now a third approach--the durable power of ...

We do not like the idea of doctors and nurses being forced to provide care that offends their sense of themselves and their art. But we like even less the idea of physicians allocating resources without the force of society's ...

Questionnaires completed at two San Francisco health facilities by 118 male homosexuals with AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) revealed that, while the majority had thought about life-sustaining treatment and choice ...

In June 1997, the US Supreme Court unanimously decided that competent, terminally ill patients have no general constitutional right to commit suicide or to obtain assistance in committing suicide. Thus, the broad prohibitions ...

Advance directives have not fulfilled their promise of facilitating decisions about end-of-life care for incompetent patients. Many legal requirements and restrictions concerning advance directives are counterproductive. ...

In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a Missouri ruling that sharply limited family decisions about life-sustaining treatment for incompetent patients. The Court held that the Constitution protects ...