Article Text
Abstract
I argue that Brierley et al are wrong to claim that parents who request futile treatment are acting against the interests of their child. A better ethical ground for withholding or withdrawing life-prolonging treatment is not that it is in the interests of the patient to die, but rather on grounds of the limitation of resources and the requirements of distributive justice. Put simply, not all treatment that might be in a person's interests must ethically be provided.
- Medical ethics
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
-
Competing interests None.
-
Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
Request Permissions
If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.
Copyright information:
Linked Articles
- Clinical ethics
- Clinical ethics
- Clinical ethics
- Clinical ethics
- Clinical ethics
- Clinical ethics
- The concise argument
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- The problem of ‘ thick in status, thin in content ’ in Beauchamp and Childress ' principlism
- Functional neuroimaging and withdrawal of life - sustaining treatment from vegetative patients
- Futility has no utility in resuscitation medicine
- Doctors ’ perceptions of how resource limitations relate to futility in end - of - life decision making: a qualitative analysis
- The development of “ medical futility ”: towards a procedural approach based on the role of the medical profession
- The best interest standard and children: clarifying a concept and responding to its critics
- 2020 Western Medical Research Conference
- Withdrawal of treatment
- Western Regional Meeting Abstracts
- Western Regional Meeting Abstracts