Wit hdrawing artificial feeding from children with brain damage

doi:10.1136/bmj.311.7018.1502

From trainee to consultant, BMJ Group offers doctors around the world tailored information, special events, learning resources and recruitment services at every step along their career path.

... by doctors, for doctors, for patients
We are open for entries!

Online learning

BMJ Learning

High-quality CME / CPD for doctors and other healthcare professionals. BMJ Learning features hundreds of accredited, peer-reviewed learning modules in text, video, and audio formats. Find out more

Courses and Qualifications

BMJ Masterclasses

BMJ Masterclasses, led by experts, help clinicians to use the latest evidence and recent guidelines in practice and meet their CPD/CME requirements. Find out more

Exam Preparation

The leading provider of online exam preparation, helping over 167,000 healthcare professionals to pass their exams. Find out more

onExamination

Search all BMJ comment articles:

From

Limit by

Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment. Please log in or subscribe below.

P E Shannon, Research registrar in anaesthetics

Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield S10 2JR

EDITOR,--Ronald E Cranford's editorial on withdrawing artificial feeding from children with brain damage aims to encourage debate about basic medical and ethical principles.1 Yet I believe that the central medical and ethical issues are not fairly addressed.

Firstly, Cranford states that so called artificial feeding is medical treatment but implies that normal eating and drinking are not. Surely this is specious. Tube feeding, whether by nasogastric tube or gastrostomy, is largely done to protect the patient's airway from soiling and for nursing expediency. Moreover, …