Dutch developments on euthanasia have drawn much attention over the years. Defenders and opponents have been telling very different stories about the practice of euthanasia and the frequency of cases, and the Dutch government ...

A physician recently asked how to respond in the case of an 87-year-old patient with advanced Alzheimer's disease, who was unable to swallow or tolerate a nasogastric tube, when the family insisted a gastrostomy tube be ...

...Much of the resistance to the notion of futility, we believe, derives from the fear that it will serve as a masquerade for less defensible motivations. For example, will its acceptance revive discarded abuses of medical ...

Conclusion: Medical decisions concerning the end of life are a difficult matter and they evoke much emotional response. What is needed, however, is an open debate in order to improve the moral quality of decision making, ...

Patient autonomy is the cornerstone of our medical ethics. Given this commitment to autonomy, proxy decisions will always strike us as problematic: it is always more difficult to ensure that the wishes of the patient ...

The goal of the PSDA is to foster communication between patients and physicians about patients' preferences for life-sustaining therapies. Compliance with the PSDA is a condition for reimbursement by Medicaid and Medicare. ...

In this paper, we examine in closer detail the ethical implications of medical futility. Section one introduces an illustrative case involving a clearly futile medical treatment. Section two outlines three contrasting positions ...