Advance care planning has recently come under fire from physicians who say that it does not work and that there is too little evidence in favor of it. Giving up on advance care planning is not called for by the evidence and doing so would mean giving up significant benefits.

There are a whole lot of us who think that, if we had dementia and were unable to live independently, we would prefer death. The idea that someone suffering from dementia and confined to a nursing home might actually welcome death is apparently so taboo that it cannot be openly contemplated.