Sunday, March 18, 2007

Computers may be better than family members at making end-of-life medical decisions for patients. "Better" is used in the sense of more accurately reflecting the patient's own preferences.

(From personal experience, I don't think this necessarily implies that computers are uncannily accurate in this regard, but rather that family members are notorious for allowing wishful thinking, guilt, and other emotional factors sway them away from what the dying patient would have actually wanted.)