ABSTRACT
The author's empirical research sets out to identify and describe important ethical and clinical issues surrounding the withholding and withdrawing of invasive intensive treatment, to see how they are resolved in real life, and to assess the consequences of current management. This chapter looks at the ethics underpinning this research more expressly as they gather together some of the loose threads that remain after detailed discussion of each part of the decision-making process. Knowledge acquired from this research thus brings closer to what ought to do because it sheds light on the important issues and aids ethical reflection, even if it cannot of itself provide an absolute resolution of the issues. Doctors tend to look first at more technical and prognostic medical factors to determine the chances of survival and the factual consequences of treatment, and then weigh up the implications in terms of pain and future impairment.
