THE PATIENT SELF-DETERMINATION ACT - NOT NOW

The "Ethics committees" column in this issue of the Hastings Center Report features an introduction by Cynthia B. Cohen and four brief commentaries on the roles hospital ethics committees may play in the making of institutional and public health care policy in the 1990s. The implications for ethics committees of the pending federal Patient Self-Determination Act are discussed by John C. Fletcher in "The Patient Self-Deterimination Act: yes," and here, by Alexander Morgan Capron, in "The Patient Self-Determination Act: not now." Capron is University Professor of Law and Medicine at the University of Southern California. He urges the federal government to use other, nonregulatory approaches if it wishes to promote the use of advance directives and to improve the care of dying patients.