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Peer-reviewed article

Autonomy in adolescent medicine

A broad consensus has been reached in the last decade about the appropriateness of decisions to withhold life-sustaining treatment from competent adult patients. The situation in adolescent medicine is not so straightforward. Legal…

By John D. LantosJanuary 1, 19891 min readin Journal of Adolescent Health Care

A broad consensus has been reached in the last decade about the appropriateness of decisions to withhold life-sustaining treatment from competent adult patients. The situation in adolescent medicine is not so straightforward. Legal ambiguity in determining competence and clinical difficulty in assessing decision-making capacity make such decisions in adolescent medicine problematic. A framework for making decisions about withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining therapy from adolescent patients is proposed, and cases are given to illustrate the way the framework may be applied.

Originally published at Journal of Adolescent Health Care · January 1, 1989.

About the author

John D. Lantos is a pediatrician and bioethicist writing on AI in medicine, neonatal intensive care, and end-of-life decisions. His essays appear in JAMA, JAMA Pediatrics, the Hastings Center Report, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Aeon. Read more about John.

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