BMJ 1995;311:1437 (25 November)

Letters

Withdrawing artificial feeding from children with brain damage

Treatment without benefit is irresponsible

EDITOR,--Ronald E Cranford revisits the issues surrounding withdrawal of treatment.1 A multiplicity of published articles and many legal case reports on this subject already exist, particularly in the American literature, yet Cranford calls for further debate on the issues and the development of medical, ethical, legal, and social policies to enable us to deal with the process of withdrawing treatment.

The medical profession does not require any new ethical principles. What it must do is address the perceived difficulty from an alternative perspective. We must ask ourselves what outcome we are trying to achieve through continuing treatment.

In the case of the persistent vegetative state the patient, irrespective of age, is never going to recover to become a normal sapient person, and all the advanced technological treatment available will not alter this fact. Any treatment is therefore futile, and it is a long established principle . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Withdrawing artificial feeding from children with brain damage
Ronald E Cranford
BMJ 1995 311: 464-465. [Extract] [Full Text]

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