Medical professionals sometimes appeal to the idea of its being medically futile to continue to offer life-sustaining treatment to certain patients. The idea is invoked in connection with permanent loss of consciousness by a patient, with permanent dependence on a life-support system, with permanent loss of consciousness and permanent dependence on a life-support system, as well as when death is held to be imminent. Staunch opponents of the legalisation of voluntary medically assisted death have been known to claim that life-sustaining medical care is never futile, but it is more common for them to contend that if, and when, further medical treatment becomes futile, physicians may only withdraw or withhold further life-sustaining care. I will argue that neither of these contentions need be accepted.

Since what it is for a medical treatment to be futile is contested my first task is to clarify the concept. I will begin by briefly referring to two significant legal cases in which medical futility was a key issue, albeit they had different outcomes. Those looking after Mrs Helga Wanglie in the Hennepin County Medical Centre in Minnesota in 1989 considered that to continue to provide her with life-sustaining treatment was medically futile. Her husband objected to the treatment being withdrawn. As mentioned in Chapter 1, in 1992 the Airedale National Health Service Trust in the UK sought the discontinuation of all life-sustaining treatment for Anthony Bland — treatment to which the patient was unable to consent (because his injuries had led to him becoming incompetent).