Medical Futility Blog

The case of Atlanta's Adriana Smith received worldwide media attention. Although determined dead, her body was sustained with technologi...

Use of MAID in Vermont ("Patient Choice") has increased substantially, according to a DOH report published a few days ago.  190 i...

The delivery of patient-centered end-of-life care is often impeded by systemic barriers, such as fragmented communication, prognostic uncert...

I am getting ready for my talk for the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics 2025-26 lecture series. My talk is "Brain Death Back...

The European Court of Human Rights has just ruled that clinicians may unilaterally withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment over patie...

New York has become  the 14th U.S. jurisdiction to authorize medical aid in dying. I had expected the statute to be the worst MAID law in th...

I posted here a prepublication draft of my article forthcoming in the University of Illinois Chicago Law Review : "Unwanted Medical Tr...

South Korea is considering crossing a line that has been rather sharp and bright in the United States. It is considering incentives to wit...

Our recent article reviewing VSED advance directives is now available open access here from the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics. Peopl...

Bob Uslander is one of the most experienced U.S. clinicians when it comes to VSED and MAID. His San Diego based company, Empowered Endings ,...

Here are my academic outputs from January 2026.   PUBLICATIONS THE RIGHT TO DIE: THE LAW OF END-OF-LIFE DECISIONMAKING (Wolters Kluwer L...

Perhaps no state has done more to document the impact of unrepresented patents than Massachusetts. Following a series of reports and media c...

Join me at the International Conference on Clinical Ethics and Consultation ( ICCEC ) from June 10-13, 2026 for Robot Surrogates: AI’s Growi...

In this  video interview , Lori La Bey talks with Wendy Longacre Brown and Sarah Longacre who worked alongside their mother, Cheryl Hauser, ...

The goal in death determination is 100% accuracy: zero false positives. So, it is regrettable that we need legislation to address roles and ...

In this episode  of Comforting Closure - Conversations with a Death Doula, host Traci Arieli sits down with Crystal Flores, an end-of-life...

The 18th World Congress of Bioethics is July 8-10, 2026 in South Africa. Register Here.  

76-year-old Rashida Sultana died while choking on food while a hospital inpatient. Nobody called 911.  A British coroner found there was con...

I am looking forward to my plenary session at the American Geriatrics Society Annual Scientific Meeting:  Practical Considerations for Deme...

In this 30-minute video , Christos Lazaridis shows why death is not a discovered empirical and biological fact. Instead, it is a social cons...