The Ethics of Discontinuing Dialysis

July 13, 2010

As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. Yet one practitioner’s perceived good deed for a dying patient could be another’s definition of homicide. In No Good Deed: A Story of Medicine, Murder, Accusations, and the Debate over How We Die (HarperCollins), Lewis M. Cohen, MD, examines the true story of two renal nurses at Baystate Medical Center (Springfield, Mass.) who were investigated for murder in 2001 after a nursing assistant accused them of causing the death of a patient. The patient was a woman in her 60s with multiple comorbidities; she and her family chose to stop her dialysis treatment and continue with palliative care only. The nursing assistant approached the district attorney’s office with her allegations, and a full murder investigation was launched. (Renal and Urology News)