A new and potentially important decision is expected from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on the issue of withdrawing life-sustaining medical treatment from those unavailable to decide for themselves. The case of Earle Spring is but an example of an increasingly familiar situation: individuals who are not totally “incompetent,” and for whom there is a poor, dismal, and certain prognosis. The lives of hundreds of patients may depend upon being hooked up to life-sustaining or life-prolonging examples of medical technology, and some will indicate that they do not want such procedures to continue.

A right to refuse medical treatment is generally accepted and patients are. presumably, able to exercise this right and instruct their physicians to stop rendering medical care even if death is the clear result.