Medical Futility Blog

Medical aid in dying is authorized in 14 U.S. states. But usage rates vary tremendously. Rates remain low in most states, and especially low...

As I have explained, for example in this University of Chicago video , clinicians across the country violate the dead donor rule every singl...

Join us in Indianapolis from October 14-17, 2026, at  ASBH  - the biggest bioethics meeting in the United States.   We continue our decade-p...

It was a pleasure to engage with members of the Hemlock Society of San Diego this week. And I was extra lucky to get some face time with Fa...

I posted my  600 slides here for today's UCSD Faye Girsh Endowed Lecture on Medical Aid in Dying. This is the Zoom link . There is a se...

Oxford University Press has just published Great Ormond Street Hospital Textbook of Paediatric Bioethics and Law.  Thus is the first defini...

I blogged about Milo in February 2025. Unfortunately, now just over a year later, we lost Peaches.  Born July 2, 2010, Peaches died this mo...

Most Americans do not have an advance directive. And most of those advance directives are not available when the patient is admitted and inc...

In today's National Post,  I  respond to charges that MAID is being or might be used to curb elder and health care costs. “Anything can ...

We know that MAID usage varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. It is rarely used in Italy, Germany, and Austria. It is far more commonly ...

I have been defending and drafting dementia VSED advance directives. In March 2026, the New Jersey Assembly introduced a bill to authorize ...

The legal pinnacle of medical aid in dying in the United States was 30 years ago this spring.   In April and May, 1996, more than a dozen fe...

After returning from the giant bolus of engagement on medical aid in dying (MAID) at ICEL5 last month, I have three domestic presentations ...

Legislation modernizing Oklahoma’s laws surrounding advance health care directives and medical decision-making to give patients more control...

Some countries, like Spain, have broad eligibility for MAID but require an onerous and lengthy application process. Others, like the USA, ha...

The Irish Health Service Executive recently obtained a High Court declaration that they can refrain from "coercive feeding" for P...

On Monday, French Senators voted against the right to MAID after a long afternoon of debate ( video ). Caught between a left wing denouncin...

While many state legislatures have already closed their 2026 sessions, Rhode Island recently held a hearing on H.B. 7760 , the Lila Manfield...

Almost all U.S. jurisdictions repealed statutes criminalizing suicide many decades ago. But suicide remained a common law crime in Virginia ...

I have been presenting and  publishing on dementia VSED advance directives. And the message is being received. More individuals are comple...