Depending on cultural, religious, and socioeconomic circumstance, infanticide occurred throughout history.(2, 3) During the classical period, infants deemed abnormal were left to die in the open,(4) and infanticide was not unusual up until the 20th century.(5, 6) But as medical expertise and technology have become increasingly sophisticated, active measures are now taken to keep alive such infants, and the degree of this endeavor has mirrored changes in societal attitude. This is particularly evident for the EPTI. However, the requirement that physicians should not provide treatment that they believe will be of no benefit can also be dated back to the classical era, and there may well be a positive obligation not to do so. Hippocrates wrote that: “[W]henever therefore a man suffers from an ill which is too strong for the means at the disposal of medicine he surely must not expect that it be overcome by medicine,” and, he continued, for the physician to provide treatment in such a situation was “allied to madness.”(7)

And Plato, in The Republic, advised that the physician should: