Heroic measures and false hopes

Abstract

“Heroic measures” refers to the deployment of unusual (rare, experimental, expensive, nonstandard) technologies or treatment regimes, or of ordinary ones beyond their usual limits. The examples ordinarily offered concern care for the terminally ill, a heart-lung machine hooked up to someone who is brain dead, and so on. But, philosophically, special complications are posed by people who would otherwise (and who may, anyway) cease to be. Here I shall focus instead on cases where such complications are absent – on extraordinary measures for creating life (in vitro fertilization and such like), and on extraordinary measures for improving the quality of the lives of the handicapped (e.g., electrical stimulation of paraplegics' muscles to simulate walking).