The Manitoba Futility Guidelines - Part II

Philosophy professor Arthur Schafer also published a comment on the Manitoba Guidelines this weekend. Writing in the Ottowa Citizen, Schafer defends the Guidelines on several familiar grounds. He argues that preserving PVS patients on life support is (1) "a waste of precious ICU resources," (2) a "cruel ordeal for the patient," and (3) "deeply demoralizing" to doctors and nurses.

Schafer rightly notes that religious belief cannot plausibly ground a right to all medical care consistent with or demanded by that belief. I am less sure about his attack on the Golubchuk's family charge that unilateral withdrawal may be murder. The daily withdrawal of LSMT from thousands of patients in the USA and Canada is not also murder. Consent really does make a legal difference under statutory and common law.

Schafer is right that:

At the end of the day we may all be forced to accept some fundamental truths: death is inevitable; health care resources are limited; health care professionals have an obligation to steward those resources; and patients and their families must try to understand what a modern health care system can realistically offer.

However, most defenders of unilateral authority still hesitate to rely too heavily on resource-based arguments.