Savulescu on the Futility of Futility

On September 26, Professor Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, will discuss The Futility of Futility at the University of Sydney's Centre for Health Governance, Law and Ethics, and its Centre for Values, Ethics and Law in Medicine (VELIM). 

Here is the abstract:  "In modern times death has, for most of us, become a managed process, where treatment is selectively withheld and withdrawn, commonly on grounds of futility. In this paper Professor Savulescu argues that the concept of medical futility is deeply flawed. He will argue that judgements of medical futility are really covert judgements of best interests, which are frequently mistaken, or judgements about distributive justice. Decisions about medical futility would be best reframed as explicit resource allocation and distributive justice issues."