释义 |
futile adj. Describing a medical intervention that has little or no prospect of achieving its intended purpose. In medical law, claims of futility can be used to justify withholding or withdrawing medical treatment at the end of life. However, it is very important to be clear about a particular treatment’s intended purpose before claiming that it is futile. Intensive care, for example, cannot be said to be futile simply on the grounds that the patient is unlikely to regain full health, since restoration of full health was never the intended purpose. |