The Slow Code — Should Anyone Rush to Its Defense?

The past two decades have witnessed dramatic changes in professional values and social expectations regarding medical care and decision making at the end of life. Increased emphasis on patients' autonomy and participation have made open discussion, both in the medical and popular literature and at the bedside, the new norm. The seemingly final taboo, euthanasia, is now the topic of frank public, intellectual, and legal debate. Although Wanzer et al., in their 1989 second look at “The Physician's Responsibility toward Hopelessly Ill Patients,” wrote that the “entire subject is now discussed openly,”1 there remains a practice that has received little . . .