Beyond Autonomy -- Physicians' Refusal to Use Life-Prolonging Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation
- 29 July 1993
- journal article
- Published by Massachusetts Medical Society in New England Journal of Medicine
- Vol. 329 (5) , 354-357
- https://doi.org/10.1056/nejm199307293290512
Abstract
Three years ago we noted that the literature on physicians' refusal to provide requested treatment was sparse1. Since that time the issue has fueled an intense, two-pronged debate -- on futility and on the limits of patient autonomy. The debate over patient autonomy is a genuinely philosophical dispute; that over futility seems to be a relapse into nominalism. It is not the meaning of a word but the moral basis for the actions of the participants that ought to be the focus of our attention. The fractious debate on the meaning of futility, evidenced in a spate of recent . . .Keywords
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