On Medical Futility - by Linda Kim

I disagree with the concepts that Jecker and Pagon present in their article. In both of their "standards" of futility and inhumanity, there's an assumption of what is good and bad for the babies' future. But who is to decide on what is good or bad for a person? Although some of the examples presented where they attempt to justify their standards may be ethical (for that particular case), not every case is the same. In other words, Jecker and Pagon tries to put a concrete "standard" in ethical decision making, but different people have different ethics. Thus, for Jecker and Pagon to set a standard for everyone (for every case) is impermissible. Moreover, they stated in their concluding remarks that "physicians are not required to offer, nor are patients entitled to receive, medical treatments that are futile or inhumane . . . [but] there should [also] be a presumption in favor of family decision making." This also is problematic. I believe that physicians should be required to offer everything they can to save their patients (to live!), and that every person born alive has a right to sustain life, and the parents are responsible to help sustain its life. Moreover, how can anyone even the family decide on what is really good for the baby? After all, when a child is born (or perhaps even when it's in the state of gestation in the mother's womb), they are another human being. One would not make moral decisions for another person. A child may be young and may depend on their parents, but that does not make them a robot to control; even a child has their right to at *least* (but really more) to live *their* life.