M.D. The issue of medical futility has taken on progressively greater importance in medical treatment as health care costs have spiraled and new modes of therapy have been developed. From a Jewish perspective, we must ask whether the physician may withhold, and whether the patient may refuse, futile therapy.
Medical futility encompasses several issues only loosely related to one another.
Life itself is never futile. One type of futile treatment is one that, even if successful, will not reverse the condition to which it is being applied. An example would be performing CPR on a terminally ill patient whose heart has stopped, not because of a cardiac abnormality, but because the patient has reached the point at which his body can no longer support life. Reviving the patient may be possible, but cardiac arrest will almost certainly recur within a very short time. This can be contrasted with performing CPR on an otherwise healthy individual who develops a cardiac arrhythmia resulting in sudden death.