Commentary: Database research—an exercise in futility?

The proof of the vegetable: a commentary on medical futility.

Patients with 'persistent vegetative state' (PVS) are often cited in the discussions of ethicists as examples of human beings who are unconscious and do not experience life, and a number of theoretical and practical recommendations have been made on that basis. This article examines the evidence and the theoretical rationale for the belief that people with PVS are unconscious and finds them wan...

Spirometric definition of COPD: exercise in futility or factual debate?

The current international guidelines for the diagnosis and management of COPD recognise spirometry as a major criterion to confirm a clinical diagnosis of COPD. The specific role of spirometry for the diagnosis of COPD is to identify the presence if airflow obstruction, which is the essential requirement for the definition of the disease. Although a reduction of the ratio of forced expiratory v...

Litigating Challenges to Executive Pay: An Exercise in Futility?

Tackling medical futility in Texas.

n engl j med 357;1 www.nejm.org july 5, 2007 was an 18-month-old boy who had Leigh’s disease, a progressive and fatal neurometabolic disorder. He had been on life support in the intensive care unit for 5 months. The hospital had invoked the Texas Advance Directives Act, which authorized it to withdraw life support if an ethics committee had determined that further life support was medically ina...

Futility stopping in clinical trials

Early stopping due to futility, also referred to as a go/nogo decision, during interim analysis has become an important feature of clinical trial designs. Current methods for futility stopping in literature are mostly based on conditional power or predictive power in conjunction with the theory of stochastic curtailment or group sequential design. They have certain drawbacks that have been note...