Edinburgh speaker series seminar

Speaker: Michael Gill (University of Edinburgh)

Title: Deciding not to prolong life because of concerns about burdening loved ones

Abstract: Many terminally ill patients perceive themselves to be a burden to loved ones who care for them. This perception of being a burden can play a significant role in terminal patients’ decisions to take courses of action, such as ceasing life-sustaining treatment or requesting physician-assisted suicide, that hasten death. I will use the term ‘burden-based decisions’ as a shorthand for cases in which a terminal patient’s perception that she is a burden to her loved ones influences her decision to take a course of action that she believes will hasten death. When should we view a terminal patient’s inclination to make a burden-based decision to be an ethical problem, a regrettable failing? And when should we view it to be a (sad but) reasonable response to the situation rather than a problem or a failing? That's the question I will address here. When we examine closely the nature of burden-based decisions, I'll suggest, we’ll see that there is more ground for these decisions to be reasonable responses than many who write on the topic imply.