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Hermann Small, MD
Los Angeles, Calif

Arch Intern Med. 1994;154(13):1536-1539.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

The article by Murphy and Finucane on new do-not-resuscitate (DNR) policies¹ leaves the reader perplexed. First, the policies are not new; second, the rationale for the new policies is contradicted by the authors themselves and the data available in the literature.

The new DNR policies the authors propose are really a new procedure for development of DNR policies. The idea is that community members along with hospital officials, professional groups, and governmental groups propose new DNR policies for the hospitals of a city. This community-based development of hospital policies is hardly a novel idea. Oregon health decisions began developing what they called "informed community consent" on the whole range of terminating care issues.² Similarly, for years, Emanuel³ has advocated community-based decision-making not just for terminating care but also for allocating scarce medical resources. In his book,⁴ he has elaborated the theoretical justification for such community-based policy . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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