As he lay dying in a hospital in San Diego, a 71-year-old retired commercial fisherman was shocked 10 times by his implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD), convulsing in front of his wife, 7 children, siblings, and mother. For 2 days, no medical professional intervened. The device was deactivated only at his wife’s insistence. Afterwards, she wanted to know, “Why wasn’t there a sticker on his chart? Why didn’t someone write that order?”
Life-prolonging medical innovations often create moral dilemmas that outpace effective clinical response. The pacemaker can postpone natural death even when patient and family regard death as a blessing. The ICD is primed to deliver a shock when sensing a rapid, unstable heart rhythm, and if it fires repeatedly toward the end of life, it can make a peaceful death impossible.