Medical futility and the Texas Advance Directives Act of 1999.

Resolution of futility by due process: early experience with the Texas Advance Directives Act.

Every U.S. state has developed legal rules to address end-of-life decision making. No law to date has effectively dealt with medical futility--an issue that has engendered significant debate in the medical and legal literature, many court cases, and a formal opinion from the American Medical Association's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. In 1999, Texas was the first state to adopt a law...

Futility: the limits of mediation.

In a recent issue of CHEST (December 2007), Burns and Truog1 argued that the history of futility can be divided into the following three sequential periods: the definitional approach; the procedural approach; and the conflict resolution approach. We agree that attempts to define futility have failed, and we agree that the procedural approach of the Texas Advance Directives Act fails to accord n...

The maladaptation of Miranda to advance directives: a critique of the implementation of the Patient Self-Determination Act.

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...

Research into emergency treatments--could the offer of 'advance directives' help?