Letter

Artificially giving nutrition and fluids is not one action

BMJ 2003; 326 doi: 10.1136/bmj.326.7391.713/a (Published 29 March 2003)
Cite this as: BMJ 2003;326:713.2

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  1. Thomas Finucane, professor of medicine (tfinucan@jhmi.edu),
  2. Colleen Christmas, assistant professor of medicine
  1. Johns Hopkins Geriatric Center, 5505 Hopkins Bayview Circle, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA

    EDITOR—The and colleagues' description of decision making for patients with severe dementia who have difficulties in eating and drinking, raises several troubling issues.1

    Firstly, they implicitly consider tube feeding to be life sustaining. In fact, no credible data show that tube feeding prolongs life in advanced dementia.2–5 An honest summary of the data is, “We have no good evidence …

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