Non-Medical Goals of Treatment

Surgeon Richard Thompson has a brief article in the February 2011 British Journal of Hospital Medicine titled "Medical Futility: A Commonly Used and Potentially Abused Idea in Medical Ethics."  It is an elementary overview of the concept using a narrow range of dated sources.  But Thompson does helpfully remind us that patients have treatment goals other than the "obvious biological goals of most treatments."  These include:

• Aesthetic (e.g. cosmetic surgery)


• Hedonic (e.g. analgesia)


• Personal (e.g. birth control)


• Psychological (e.g. antidepressants)


• Spiritual

If the treatment can achieve any one or more of these goals for the patient, is it futile?