Treating the brain dead for the benefit of the family

The law -- and almost all medical ethicists and physicians -- insists upon an exclusively patient-centered ethics. There is virtual unanimity within medical ethics that treatment must serve the interests of the patient, at least within limits posed by the just distribution of scarce medical resources. A patient-centered ethics means that the interests of the patient cannot be sacrificed to promote the interests of others -- not the interests of society, not the interests of other patients, not the interests of the family, and certainly not the interests of the hospital staff or the physician.