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Mary Jo Jacobs, MD
Bethesda, Md

JAMA. 1991;265(7):866.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor. —

The articles on life-sustaining therapies^1,2 were notable for their striking contrast in approach and conclusions. No doubt many of us had considered answers to the questions posed long before reading the results of these studies.

The results have probably done little to encourage consensus building on the subject, with their widely divergent outcomes. Is it redundant to say that age alone should not stand as an appropriate marker for defining diagnostic and treatment groups in health care except at the very macro level? We have only to look at the "newborn" to see that we could never place all babies in a single group in planning treatment strategies. Nor is the adolescent of 13 years predictable by age in considering degrees of sexual maturity, development, or health needs. There are many vital, healthy 75-year-olds and many weak and chronically ill 45-year-olds.

Murphy and Matchar's¹ . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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