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“What is the article suggesting? That I should have left my 37 year old colleague (with two young children) to die on the floor? That I should have allowed my 53 year old neighbor to die on the floor of her kitchen in front of her 16 year old son?”

What are you suggesting? How could anyone, after actually reading the article, have to ask what the article is “suggesting”? Why are you suggesting that the article is suggesting that the article suggests leaving people to die “on the floor” when it suggests no such thing?

"...Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a “tension pneumothorax”), walked out of the hospital. If a patient suffers from severe illness, old age, or a terminal disease, the odds of a good outcome from CPR are infinitesimal, while the odds of suffering are overwhelming. Poor knowledge and misguided expectations lead to a lot of bad decisions..."

You sound like you agree with the author, but what conclusion would someone come to after reading this section? This supposed "voice of authority" says that in his career, he has seen only one person survive, and that person didn't actually have any cardiac problems, but his heart stopped due to an oxygen shortage.

Words have meaning. If this supposed doctor didn't mean to say CPR is worthless, what exactly do YOU think he meant to say? Substitute any other activity in there for CPR, and the meaning is evident.

I did read the article. I understand and agree with much of the thrust of it. I also agree that issues such as advance directives are the business of the patient, his/her family and the doctors.

But what I read in the article is frankly a sneering dismissal of the value of cardiopulmonary resuscitation when I have seen it work to great benefit. (With, of course, rapid application of defibrillation).

I just think that the author needs to to be less dismissive in his assessment of CPR and and a little more clear in the fact that he questions the value or wisdom in it when applied to a clearly terminal patient.