futile treatment theory

Forced DNR Coming to Texas?

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Good grief! The state with the worst futile care law in the nation now has legislation pending that would enable doctors to place DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) orders on a patient’s chart without notice or permission — even if the patient is competent! From the text of S.B. 303 (PDF): Sec.A166.012. STATEMENT RELATING TO DO-NOT-RESUSCITATE [...]

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Stealth Medical Futility: You Can’t Handle the Truth!

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Futile Care Theory claims that doctors and hospital bioethics committees should be empowered to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment based on their beliefs that the patient’s life is not worth living or too expensive to maintain (or both). But this flies in the face of patient autonomy, supposedly a prime directive of bioethics theory. Over the [...]

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“Right to Live” Case Before Canada Supreme Court

Futile Care Theory, aka medical futility, is a bioethical theory under which doctors/ hospital bioethics committees are empowered to withdraw wanted life-sustaining treatment based on their perceptions of the patient’s quality of life and/or a cost-benefit analysis determining whether the money being spent is worth the price. Now the Canadian Supreme Court is going to [...]

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Sedated to Death Without Permission in UK

Patients are not individuals in centralized healthcare systems. Rather, they become members of checklist categories on bureaucratic check lists. How else explain doctors putting nearly one-half of patients on the Liverpool Care Pathway sedation / dehydration protocol — in which patients are put in comas and denied sustenance — without bothering to tell patients of [...]

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Forced Dehydration for 12-Year-Old Gunshot Victim?

Texas has an awful futile care law. It permits hospital bioethics committees to impose members/doctors’ values that a patient’s life is not worth living based on quality of life. A story just out shows the injustice of the process — a terrible law about which I wrote in more detail. On August 6, a 12-year-old [...]

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Anti-Christian “Secularist” Futile Care Attack Parental Medical Decision Making Rights

The issue of when to cease life-supporting medical treatment — and whether it should be done over the objections of patients/families (Futile Care Theory) — are among the most important bioethical issues we face today. But surely, such questions should be approached as a general matter — not focused against a subset of patients. But [...]

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Phony “Death Panel” Definition Won’t Make the Issue Go Away

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC The Medical Establishment continues to try and misdirect the conversation on the pending threat of “death panels” under Obamacare. They pretend it is about “end of life discussions.” But even though Sarah Palin mistakenly made that allusion when she first coined the term, she quickly [...]

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Family Non-Treatment Decisions Not “Death Panels”

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC The political left just does not get the concept of “death panels,” and/or intentionally conflate it with ethical approaches to refusing treatment in order to confuse people for political purposes. This is clear from a Time summary of Joe Klein’s cover story about being the [...]

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The Trouble With Futile Care Theory

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC I was pretty teed off about the Canadian doctors trying to force Hassan Rasouli off of wanted life-sustaining treatment. Then, when I found out that even though they were absolutely wrong in their “certainty” that he would never wake up, they still were considering trying [...]

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Doctors Ask Canadian Supreme Court to Impose Futile Care Theory

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC The British Medical Journal reports that Canadian doctors are seeking Canadian Supreme Court authority to withdraw wanted life-extending treatment. From the May 10, 2012 story (abstract only): Canada’s Supreme Court will next week consider an appeal from two Canadian doctors who seek, against a family’s [...]

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