Medical Futility Blog

ICU hospital professionals do not lead by example. A new study of 200 ICU professionals reveals two interesting findings:  1. Only 13% have...

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is the largest integrated health care system in the United States. It is a pleasure to speak with V...

In a series of articles and book chapters, I have defended using Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking (VSED) as a bridge to legally qual...

I blogged about this case in early 2023 . But it is back again before the California Court of Appeal.  California oncologist R. Michael Will...

A more detailed program for the The World Federation of Right to Die Societies International Conference 2026 is now available. Thursday, No...

The Spanish  Society of Internal Medicine (SEMI) Bioethics & Professionalism Working Group has published a 300-page Manual for Limiting ...

I'm pleased to see Art Caplan, in his latest   Medscape Ethics video, agree with me that consent is not needed for brain death testing....

This recent article in Transplant International is encouraging. Delphi methodology was used to explore international perspectives on the de...

The Japan Geriatrics Society (JGS) has updated its Position Statement on end‐of‐life care for older adults.   Most notably, it introduces a...

Over at the  Journal of Medical Ethics Forum  Marco Annoni offers a powerful defense of the new BMA Guidance on VSED .   But he rightly con...

I'm delighted that my latest article (with Alex Supady and Bill Allen) is finally out in Chest : "Continuing ECMO without Potentia...

Surgeon and North Carolina Congressman Greg Murphy has introduced the latest in a long line of U.S.Congressional resolutions opposing MAID....

This past week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit heard oral arguments  in Curran v. Delaware.  Those challenging the Delawar...

Here is a video of my recent presentation at  Old Dominion University's  Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences: " Medica...

Advance directives are binding in all U.S. jurisdictions. Noncompliance by clinicians and healthcare entities regularly leads to regulatory ...

Almost six years ago, t he German Federal Constitutional Court recognized the fundamental right to end one's own life freely and respon...

It was a pleasure to be a part of today's AP story on medical aid in dying: "She lived to see ‘Deb’s law’ take effect. Now she can...

In this 10-minute video , writer  Ananda Forest talks about his 92-year-old mother's VSED (voluntarily stopping eating and drinking). A...

This recent article , Operational Ethics in the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit: A Practical Framework for Ethical Decision-Making , exam...

In early September 2026, in Vermont just south of Montreal, Barbara Duprey was 81 years old and her body was in the dying process. She had n...

 My latest article is out in the American Journal of Bioethics- "Informed Consent Disclosure Duties in Both Clinical and Research Cont...

Talk VSED , a motivated group of UK death doulas and others, recently posted  this video :   Conflicts of Power in Voluntarily Stopping Eati...

This  Guardian  article explains the cryonics industry that freezes people after their death.  Their customers hope that they can be reanima...

The Footprints Project  is a tool used to counter the unintentional; dehumanization of critically ill patients in the ICU.  This simple inte...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a disability discrimination case may proceed where Texas providers withheld life-s...