The statement on withholding and withdrawing treatment in intensive care issued by the Australian and New Zealand Society of Intensive Care is a guide to promulgate local end-of-life decision making and palliative care guidelines. The statement is a formal professional but not legal document. Nevertheless it clearly presents the position of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Intensive Care, while providing the doctors, nurses, patients and families with a moral as well as factual framework within which discussions surrounding dying and end-of-life care in intensive care can be held. Although independent, the statement fully complies with the proceedings of a recent international conference; Challenges in End-of-Life Care in the ICU: Statement of the 5th International Consensus Conference in Critical Care: Brusels, Belgium, April 2003.

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