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Medical Futility And Religious Free Exercise, Teneille R. Brown

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

A tragic scenario has become all too common in hospitals across the United States. Dying patients pray for medical miracles when their physicians think that continuing treatment would render no meaningful benefit. This situation is unfortunately referred to as “medical futility.” In these cases, physicians, who are less likely than their patients to rely on God as a means of coping with major illness, are at an impasse. Their patients request everything be done so that they can have more time for God to intervene, but in the physician’s professional experience, everything will probably do nothing. What is the physician …