Bedside Ethics for the Hopeless Case

Abstract

The one most entitled to advise doctors on treatment, a wise practitioner asserts, is he who himself has treated. The same principle holds for nontreatment. When the virtues of continuing measures that sustain the life of a hopelessly afflicted patient are questioned, who has a more valid prerogative to weigh the pros and cons than he who himself has had to decide? Shaw and Duff and Campbell, who elsewhere in this issue describe the agony of identifying infants who have "the right to die," have the necessary credentials; they may be amateur philosophers but they have endured the fire.This . . .