Much of recent medical, legal, and ethical focus has been directed toward the unborn or newly born. Guidelines and frameworks for decision making are in the early stages of evolution and are likely to shift as the politics, ethics, and economics of caregiving move beyond technologic accomplishments and debates into a more compassionate construct that may include input from an institutional bioethics committee. Beyond that, the courts may continue to be the place where unresolved issues are settled, and with each (...) passing year new and often divergent legal decisions are being generated that further complicate the physician's role as care giver and healer. (shrink)