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End of life decisions

The Homeric Power of Advance Directives

By Charles Foster

[Image: Ulysses and the Sirens: John William Waterhouse, 1891: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne]

We shouldn’t underestimate Homer’s hold on us. Whether or not we’ve ever read him, he created many of our ruling memes.

I don’t think it’s fanciful (though it might be ambitious) to suggest that he, and the whole heroic ethos, are partly responsible for our uncritical adoption of a model of autonomy which doesn’t do justice to the sort of creatures we really are. That’s a big claim. I can’t justify it here. But one manifestation of that adoption is our exaggerated respect for advance directives – declarations made when one is capacitous about how one would like to be treated if incapacitous, and which are binding if incapacity supervenes if (in English law) the declaration is ‘valid and applicable.’ 1.

I suspect that some of this respect comes from the earliest and most colourful advance directive story ever: Odysseus and the Sirens.Read More »The Homeric Power of Advance Directives

Cognitive snobbery: The Unacceptable Bias in Favour of the Conscious

There are many corrosive forms of discrimination. But one of the most dangerous is the bias in favour of consciousness, and the consequent denigration of the unconscious.

We see it everywhere. It’s not surprising. For when we’re unreflective – which is most of the time – we tend to suppose that we are our conscious selves, and that the unconscious is a lower, cruder part of us; a seething atavistic sea full of monsters, from which we have mercifully crawled, making our way ultimately to the sunlit uplands of the neocortex, there to gaze gratefully and dismissively back at what we once were.  It’s a picture encoded in our self-congratulatory language: ‘Higher cognitive function’; ‘She’s not to be blamed: she wasn’t fully conscious of the consequences.’: ‘In the Enlightenment we struck off the shackles of superstition and freed our minds to roam.’Read More »Cognitive snobbery: The Unacceptable Bias in Favour of the Conscious

Urgency, Delayed Decision-making and Ethics in the Court of Protection

By Dominic Wilkinson, 24th June 2021

cross post from the Open Justice Court of Protection Project

On 11th June 2021,  I was a public observer (via MS Teams) of a case in the Court of Protection: Case No. 1375980T Re GU (also blogged about by Jenny Kitzinger here).

The case was (though I did not know it beforehand) related closely to issues that I have written about over a number of years (for example here, here, here ). It was an urgent hearing before Mr Justice Hayden concerning clinically-assisted nutrition and hydration (CANH) for a 70 year old man, GU, who has been in a prolonged disorder of consciousness for seven years.

I have read the judgments from many similar cases in the UK, from the first ever case concerning a feeding tube for a vegetative patient heard in (what is now) the Supreme Court in 1992 (the case of  Tony Bland, injured in the Hillsborough football stadium disaster), through to the most recent Supreme Court case of Re. Y, at which the court ruled that it is not mandatory to bring cases concerning CANH-withdrawal to court unless there is disagreement about best interests, or the decision is finely balanced (report here). I’m also familiar with the judgments in other jurisdictions (e.g. Schiavo in the USA,  Lambert in France) and have been involved in deliberation in clinical ethics committees about cases with similar features.

Yet, this was my first time hearing open deliberations in the Court of Protection. It was a fascinating and thought-provoking experience.Read More »Urgency, Delayed Decision-making and Ethics in the Court of Protection

Guest Post: Frances Kamm- Harms, Wrongs, and Meaning in a Pandemic

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Written by F M Kamm
This post originally appeared in The Philosophers’ Magazine

When the number of people who have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. reached 500,000 special notice was taken of this great tragedy. As a way of helping people appreciate how enormous an event this was, some commentators thought it would help to compare it to other events that involved a comparable number of people losing their lives. For example, it was compared to all the U.S lives lost on the battlefield in World Wars 1 and II and the Vietnam War (or World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam). Such comparisons raise questions, concerning dimensions of comparison, some of which are about degrees of harm, wrong, and meaningfulness which are considered in this essay. (Since the focus in the comparison was on the number of soldiers who died rather the number of other people affected by their deaths, this discussion will also focus on the people who die in a pandemic rather than those affected by their deaths.)

Read More »Guest Post: Frances Kamm- Harms, Wrongs, and Meaning in a Pandemic

Is Life-Sustaining Treatment Being Lawfully Withdrawn From Patients In Prolonged Disorders Of Consciousness? Nobody Seems To Know

By Charles Foster

From the time of the decision of the House of Lords in Airedale NHS Trust v Bland (1993) until the decision of the Supreme Court in An NHS Trust v Y (2018) (which I will refer to here as ‘Y”) it had been understood that the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment (typically clinically assisted nutrition and hydration – ‘CANH’) from patients in a vegetative state should be endorsed by the court. Over the years, this practice had been extended to cover such withdrawals in Minimally Conscious States too.

In Y, the Supreme Court held that there was no requirement for court review or endorsement. Why?Read More »Is Life-Sustaining Treatment Being Lawfully Withdrawn From Patients In Prolonged Disorders Of Consciousness? Nobody Seems To Know

General Anaesthesia in End of Life Care – GAEL.

by Dominic Wilkinson @Neonatalethics

Our paper General anaesthesia in end-of-life care: extending the indications for anaesthesia beyond surgery has been published today in Anaesthesia. It is part of a series of work led by researcher Antony Takla, together with Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson. The recent paper is a collaboration with Professor Jaideep Pandit, Professor of Anaesthesia at Oxford.

 

Read More »General Anaesthesia in End of Life Care – GAEL.

Press Release: Medical and ethical experts say ‘make general anaesthesia more widely available for dying patients’

General anaesthesia is widely used for surgery and diagnostic interventions, to ensure the patient is completely unconscious during these procedures. However, in a paper published in Anaesthesia (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists) ethics and anaesthesia experts from the University of Oxford say that general anaesthesia should be more widely available for patients at… Read More »Press Release: Medical and ethical experts say ‘make general anaesthesia more widely available for dying patients’

Consent Without Alternatives

Written by Ben Davies and Joshua Parker

“COVID-19: Do not resuscitate orders might have been put in place without consent, watchdog says”. This recent headline followed an investigation by the Care Quality Commission into Do Not Attempt Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (DNACPR) decisions early in the pandemic. In a recent post, Dominic Wilkinson highlights two misconceptions in the coverage of this report, one of which is the ‘consent misconception’.

Dominic’s view is that “there is no ethical requirement…to seek the agreement of patients not to offer or provide a treatment” which a medical professional judges inappropriate. Of course, his position is not that consultation and discussion around CPR is inappropriate, only that consent is not necessary. This is the standard view on consent in this context and, due in part to the Tracey judgment, reflects doctors’ practice. Thus, an important distinction emerges between consenting to the withholding of some treatment, and discussion of that decision. Doctors may be ethically required to discuss a decision without also having an obligation to seek the patient’s consent. The absence of consent, then, does not signal that the DNACPR was unethical, whereas a failure to consult probably will.

Read More »Consent Without Alternatives

DNACPR Orders in a Pandemic: Misgivings and Misconceptions.

by Dominic Wilkinson @Neonatalethics

This week, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) published an interim report into resuscitation decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a number of media outlets, the report found that in the first wave of the crisis inappropriate and possibly unlawful ‘do not resuscitate’ orders were used “without the consent of patients and families” (see eg Telegraph, Sky).

There are real concerns and important questions to answer about policies and care for patients in care homes and in the community during the pandemic. However, the media stories, and the CQC report itself appear to illustrate two ethical misconceptions.

 

Read More »DNACPR Orders in a Pandemic: Misgivings and Misconceptions.