Legal Aspects of Futile Therapy in the Face of the End of Life

This article presents legal issues related to therapeutic decisions made by doctors and to euthanasia and assisted suicide, which are prohibited and penalized in the Polish legal system. The paper refers to the terms ‘futile therapy’ and ‘over-zealous treatment’. It was also considered appropriate to refer to the concept of resuscitation, which can be understood narrowly as cardiopulmonary resuscitation or broadly as all activities aimed at potentially reversing the dying process. Completion of resuscitation as it is broadly understood means that (unless there has been recovery) it is considered a futile therapy. De lege lata there are no statutory regulations in the Polish legal system that could be directly related to the decision to abandon futile therapy in order to assess its legal legitimacy. The aim of the study is to present the problem of futile therapy de lege lata and de lege ferenda in the face of the end of life. The article also presents the latest draft of legal regulation regarding futile therapy developed by an interdisciplinary team appointed by the Patients’ Rights Ombudsman in the form of ‘Standards of conduct in medical therapies used in the end-of-life period’.