New Guidelines on Care of Dying

Doctors caring for the terminally ill should determine whether their patients want to remain on life-support systems as death nears, and they should follow those wishes, according to new ethical guidelines.

“Although physicians must often be authoritative about the options available to patients, all involved should recognize that the actual authority over the patient never resides with the physician,” the report says. “Patients alone, or their legal surrogates, have the right to control what happens to them.” The guidelines were drawn up by Drs. John E. Ruark and Thomas A. Raffin and other members of the Stanford University Medical Center Committee on Ethics. They are not the hospital’s official policy. The guidelines, which are recommended for use by physicians, were published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.