Tag: end of life
Blog Posts (19)
May 15, 2013
Emergent Dualism and the Sanctity of Human Life
My wife and I spent May 10-11 at the annual conference of Biola’s Center for Christian Thought (CCT), where the theme for 2012-2013 has been “Neuroscience and the Soul.” The plenary talks are not all on the web, yet, although some are on Facebo...April 12, 2013
A funny thing happened on the way to the ICU . . .
In the latter half of the last century, medical technology made huge leaps in the ability to sustain biological function. Suddenly we could replace lost kidney function and keep lungs breathing and hearts pumping for people who, but a short time before...March 18, 2013
Why Dr. Kevorkian Was No Hero…and I Often Am
Admittedly that title is provocative. In a sense, both the late Dr. Jack Kevorkian and I could be considered to be in the business of euthanasia (though I hope I will someday be remembered for far more), but the species of our patients differs. And t...June 13, 2012
"The Descendants": The Bioethics Movie That Wasn't
Okay, I am probably one of the last people in the United States (no, probably the world) to watch the movie “The Descendants”.…
April 3, 2012
In Memoriam: Fr. Kevin O'Rourke
From the Loyola University Chicago Neiswanger website:
Kevin O’Rourke, O.P., J.C.D., S.T.M., Dominican priest, canon lawyer, and health care ethicist died on Wednesday.…
June 24, 2011
Patients Gifting to Providers: Ethical or Suspect?
Art Caplan asks this very question in his MSNBC column this week. When a wealthy recluse died at the age of 104, to whom did she leave her fortune?…
June 4, 2011
The Death of Dr. Death: Good Gossip for the Blogosphere
With so much ink and space within the blogosphere already used to reflect on the death of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, it only seems fitting that we share with you some of the best perspectives on the controversial, death-obsessed man who turned the end-of-life debate on its head for so much of the 1990s.…
June 7, 2010
Kagan on Bioethics
Hat tip to Business Week for shedding some light on U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kegan’s views on bioethics.
Here’s the rundown:
She’s pro-physician assisted suicide and opposed proposals to ban it in 1997 and has said the DEA lacks the power to penalize physicians who give life-ending drug to patients.…
April 28, 2010
Ethics of Rationing End-of-Life Care: Can We Ever Agree?
A PBS forum with Arthur Caplan and others asked the BIG question about rationing end-of-life care, and perhaps rationing in general: can we as a society ever agree as to what the rational goals of health care can be at the end of life?…
April 15, 2010
AJOB's April Issue is Now Online!
Just in time to coincide with National Healthcare Decisions Day, AJOB’s April issue is now online featuring an editorial and a target article discussing advance directives and patient decision-making.…
Published Articles (3)
American Journal of Bioethics: Volume 11 Issue 7 - Jul 2011
A Philosophical Obituary: Dr. Jack Kevorkian Dead at 83 Leaving End of Life Debate in the US Forever Changed Timothy F. Murphy
American Journal of Bioethics: Volume 11 Issue 2 - Feb 2011
Book Review of D. Micah Hester, End of Life Care and Pragmatic Decision Making Rishad Motlani
American Journal of Bioethics: Volume 7 Issue 10 - Oct 2007
"Show Me" Bioethics and Politics Myra J. Christopher
News (46)
October 23, 2012 6:01 pm
Watch your Words! The Challenges of Law Around the End of Life (Oxford Uinversity Blog)
[I]n South Australia last week, a bill has been proposed to clarify the legal status of advance directives. One very small part of that bill involves a modification to an older palliative care act. The modification corrects an ambiguity in wording in the earlier act. The ambiguity is subtle. However, that choice of words has had major consequences for seriously ill children and adults in South Australia and for health practitioners. It is a salutary reminder of how hard it is to enact good laws in the area of end of life, and how easily such laws can make things worse rather than better.
September 21, 2012 8:12 pm
After Death, Helping to Prolong Life (The New Tork Times)
EDINA, Minn. — Just down the hallway, in Room 356, Curtis Kelly’s body lay covered to the chest by a white blanket, his torso rising and falling with the help of a ventilator. A neurologist at Fairview Southdale Hospital had declared him brain-dead nearly six hours earlier. Mr. Kelly’s far-flung family — a son, three siblings, a sister-in-law, his girlfriend and the daughter of a former girlfriend — had gathered in a narrow conference room in the intensive care unit so that John P. LeMay could ask permission to recover his tissue and organs.
August 14, 2012 7:47 pm
End-of-Life Care for Kids Raises Ethics Issues (MedPage Today)
Healthcare providers should have rapid access to legal remedies for end-of-life disputes involving children whose parents resist withdrawal of aggressive therapy on the basis of religious beliefs, authors of a review concluded. Over a 3-year period, 17 of 203 cases could not be resolved after lengthy discussions with parents. Subsequently, most of the cases were resolved, but five remained undecided, each because of the parents’ belief in a miracle for their children, according to an article published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
August 14, 2012 7:45 pm
Deeply Religious Parents Often Reluctant to Cease Medical Care (ABC News)
Arthur Caplan, the head of the division of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, recalls a case of a man who had beaten his six-month-old child to death. It was a horror the mother simply could not accept. A deeply religious woman, she pushed the doctors to do more, telling them that God would intervene and allow her daughter to make a miraculous recovery. For several hours there was a tense standoff between caregivers and parent.
August 7, 2012 9:35 pm
At the End of Life, Talk Helps Bridge a Racial Divide (The New York Times)
Living or dying is not at issue. The question this family confronts is how the patient will die: a little sooner, with adequate morphine, surrounded by loved ones in the hospice unit, or a little later, in a never dark or quiet patch of the I.C.U., ribs broken by failed, if well-intentioned, CPR. Add to this the following: The patient and family are black. And while race should not be relevant at this moment, research tells us otherwise.
July 27, 2012 5:57 pm
Are Doctors More Likely to Refuse CPR? (The Atlantic)
Are doctors more likely to refuse revival in the event of cardiac arrest? In the Hopkins study, 90 percent of doctors said they’d rather die by cardiac arrest than be resuscitated. Only a quarter of the public feels the same way. Do doctors know something we don’t about the miracles of CPR? In one Japanese study of 95,000 CPR cases, just eight percent of patients survived for longer than a month after being revived.
July 26, 2012 4:25 pm
King: U.S. lifestyles to blame for high health costs (Houston Chronicle)
Another challenge for the U.S. with respect to overall health care costs is our cultural approach to end of life care. Medicare now estimates that 27 percent of its budget goes for care provided in the last year of life, and a big chunk of that is spent in the last few weeks of a person’s life. The Lien Foundation did a study on end of life care in 40 developed countries. While the U.S. ranked high on the availability and quality of end-of-life care, its cost of care was one of the highest.
July 11, 2012 6:41 pm
Legal Euthanasia Didn’t Raise Death Rate, Researchers Say (Bussinessweek)
“Countries differ greatly in demography, culture and organization of medical care,” Lo, who is also director of the medical ethics program at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a comment accompanying the study. More in- depth information is needed to better understand how patients and physicians reach their decisions, he said.
July 10, 2012 4:23 pm
Doctor accused of ending patients' lives prematurely (ABC Online)
There are calls for a Queensland doctor to be stripped of his right to practice medicine and investigated over allegations he prematurely ended the lives of patients under his care. Former Queensland Medical Board investigator Jo Barber says the doctor’s actions are so dangerous he could have been charged with manslaughter or murder. Ms Barber says there are a number of deaths linked to the doctor, who, after fronting the state’s medical board, was allowed to continue practising as long as he was not working in intensive care.
July 9, 2012 9:12 pm
Ensuring a good death: a public health priority (Oxford University Press Blog)
Protecting the health and wellbeing of the population directly or indirectly involved with death and dying is a huge public health challenge. Currently, high quality end of life care is not yet available in most parts of the world, and in those countries where it is available it is not accessible or not initiated timely for all in need, independent of their disease, age, gender, socioeconomic, or ethnic background. Largely as a result of that, a large majority receives overly aggressive treatment until death or shortly before death, has undertreated psychological and physical symptoms at the end of life, and is not able to die in a place or manner that accords with their personal preferences.