• Preface; Foreword Alexander Morgan Capron; Contributors; 1. Medical futility: a useful concept? Howard Brody; 2. Death with dignity Patricia Brophy; 3. Physicians and medical futility: experience in the critical care setting Harry S. Rafkin and Thomas Rainey; 4. Physicians and medical futility: experience in the setting of general medical care Norton Spritz; 5. Futility issues in pediatrics Joel E. Frader and Jon Watchko; 6. Medical futility: a nusing home perspective Ellen Knapik Bartoldus; 7. Alternative medicine and medical futility Joseph J. Jacobs; 8. How culture and religion affect attitudes toward medical futility Mary F. Morrison and Sarah Gelbach DeMichele; 9. When religious views and medical judgements conflict: civic polity and the social good John J. Paris and Mark Poorman; 10. Conflict resolution: experience of consultation-liaison psychiatrists James J. Strain, Stephen L. Snyder and Martin Drooker; 11. Ethics committees and end of life decision making Alice Herb and Eliot J. Lazar; 12. The economics of futile interventions Donald J. Murphy; 13. Medical futility: a legal perspective William Prip and Anna Moretti; 14. Professional and public community projects for developing medical futility guidelines Linda Johnson and Robert Lyman Potter; 15. Community futility policies: the illusion of consensus? Bethany Spielman; 16. Not quite the last word: scenarios and solutions Karen Orloff Kaplan; Indexes.

'The conflict between patients' automony and choice and professionals' decision making is at the core of Medical Futility … It analyses care at the end of life in cultural, religious, and ethical contexts, as well as the economic consequences of providing treatments that are of little benefit at this, or indeed, any, time.' Alex Paton, British Medical Journal