Life and death: Hospital ethics panels help families decide

An infant is born with no functioning brain. A teen is ravaged in a car wreck. A 90-year-old with dementia and pneumonia lies unconscious in intensive care. Medical and moral decisions must be made. But there's no written directive for guidance. Family and physicians disagree. What now? Every day, in a hospital somewhere in the USA, a group of strangers — the hospital ethics committee — is called in to help people make the choices of a lifetime. USA Today