GMC appeals against judgment on withholding treatment

Withdrawing and withholding treatment: comments on new guidelines.

A new practice framework for clinicians has recently been issued by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health through their Ethics Advisory Committee. It deals with babies and children for whom intensive treatment may not be in their best interest. These are diYcult cases. Absolute certainty is rarely possible; there are inevitably issues of conscience and conflict, which add to the bur...

Considerations regarding withholding/withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.

On the ethics of withholding and withdrawing medical treatment

A general rationale is presented for withholding and withdrawing medical treatment in end-of-life situations, and an argument is offered for the moral irrelevance of the distinction, both in the context of pharmaceutical treatments, such as chemotherapy in cancer, and in the context of life-sustaining treatments, such as the artificial ventilator in lateral amyotrophic sclerosis. It is argued t...

Withholding life prolonging treatment, and self deception.

OBJECTIVES To compare non-treatment decision making by general practitioners and geriatricians in response to vignettes. To see whether the doctors' decisions were informed by ethical or legal reasoning. DESIGN Qualitative study in which consultant geriatricians and general practitioners (GPs) randomly selected from a list of local practitioners were interviewed. The doctors were asked whethe...

Ethical aspects of withdrawing and withholding treatment.

Decisions about withdrawing and withholding treatment are common in health care. During almost every encounter between health professionals and patients a decision needs to be made about treatment options. In most cases these choices do not pose any difficulty, for example, starting antibiotics when a patient has an infection. However, decisions not to treat, or to stop treating, raise fundamen...