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Advance Directives and Alzheimer's Disease
1Dena S. Davis, J.D., Ph.D., is Presidential Endowed Chair in Health and Professor of Bioethics at Lehigh University, a post she took up in 2011 after two decades of teaching at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She is the co-author (with Laurie Zoloth) of Notes from a Narrow Ridge: Religion and Bioethics, and author of Genetic Dilemmas: Reproductive Technology, Parental Choices, and Children's Futures. She has published numerous articles in, e.g., Hastings Center Report, Journal of Medical Ethics, and Journal of Clinical Ethics. She has been a visiting scholar at NIH; Arizona State University; Hastings Center; Brocher Foundation. The author has her B.A. from Marlboro College, Marlboro, VT (1972); her Ph.D. from University of Iowa (1987); her J.D. from University of Virginia (1990).
Abstract:
Americans who are afraid of living for many years with Alzheimer's might seek a way to end their lives early, when their dementia has just entered the moderate phase. There is no legal process for doing so. In this paper I argue that advance directives, in particular, are not a legal solution for those who prefer to die rather than suffer years of dementia. The problem is that an advance directive only works to hasten death when there is a life-threatening illness for which one can refuse treatment; more often than not, Alzheimer's kills the self long before it kills the body.