The Disability Rights Movement Is Fighting Futile Care Theory

As readers of Secondhand Smoke and my other writing know, I am trying to raise public awareness of futile care theory (medical futility), which I see as a profound threat to patient autonomy and the concept of equal moral worth among all human beings. The disability right movement “gets it” and perceives, accurately in my view, that their members are prime targets for unilateral refusal of wanted life-sustaining treatment. Here is an article against futility from a disability rights perspective.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Lift My Chin, Lord 

Jennifer Reeser

Lift my chin, Lord,Say to me,“You are not whoYou feared to be,Not Hecate, quite,With howling sound,Torch held…

Letters

Two delightful essays in the March issue, by Nikolas Prassas (“Large Language Poetry,” March 2025) and Gary…

Spring Twilight After Penance 

Sally Thomas

Let’s say you’ve just comeFrom confession. Late sunPours through the budding treesThat mark the brown creek washing Itself…