Wrong Medicine

In this text, Lawrence J. Schneiderman and Nancy S. Jecker address issues that have occupied the media and the courts since the time of Karen Ann Quinlan. The authors examine the ethics of cases in which medical treatment is offered - or mandated even if a patient lacks the capacity to appreciate the benefit of it or if the treatment will still leave a patient totally dependent on intensive medical care. As medical costs soar and technology proliferates, an intense controversy has arisen over the notion of medical futility. Should doctors be doing all that they are doing? Are patients and families entitled to demand any treatment they wish from a physician? Should life-support be considered futile if the patient is permanently unconscious or too sick to leave the intensive care setting? In exploring these questions, Schneiderman and Jecker re-examine the doctor-patient relationship and call for a restoration of common sense and reality to what we expect from medicine.