American physicians and parents reading Roger Burne's moving account of the life and death of young William in Britain will be startled, I suspect, by the striking difference expected had a real-life drama of similar circumstances been enacted in the USA. When the parents and William said, in essence, “Enough!,” the unwritten moral code of professional behavior in Britain sanctioned their doctors' humane self-restraint, as well as the positive action taken by the doctors to make the necessary arrangements for the child to die at home. Moreover, the importance of family's private domain stands out prominently in the story from Burne's side of the Atlantic. The most crucial decisions taken by William's family took place on their own “turf.” Unlike too many situations in the USA, the family's deliberations in Britain did not take place in a court of law; and not in a hospital surrounded by well-meaning experts, who are, nonetheless, strangers.