Click here to read End of Life Decisions 101, an overview of End of Life Decision Making

Kay, an 89-year-old resident of a North Vancouver nursing home, had travelled with family to Zurich, Switzerland, to a clinic called Dignitas. The mother of seven children was in a wheelchair, suffering from a terminal condition called spinal tenosis, which meant her body, as she said, was “totally collapsing.” (Vancouver Sun)

The Globe’s Lisa Priest examines how two families’ stories are shaping a legal and moral battleground over who has the right to make life-or-death decisions. IN EDMONTON: Parents who want their brain-injured baby to live fight with a hospital who says they should let him go IN QUEBEC: A hospital ethics board clashes with a family that took their child off a feeding tube. (The Globe and Mail)

THE Catholic Church last night vowed to challenge in court any move to legalise assisted suicide, after veteran MSP Margo MacDonald launched her right-to-die bill. The Church has questioned the legality of the proposed law that could introduce suicide clinics to Scotland and see those as young as 16 given the right to decide to have their lives ended. (Scotsman)

Three-month-old Isaiah May, who suffered brain damage at birth, breathes on a ventilator in an Edmonton neonatal intensive care unit. (Parentcentral.ca)

Imagine two deer trying to escape a searing forest fire. One deer is old and hobbled; the other young and fit. Which one tries harder? Of course, they both try as hard as they can. Would anyone expect the older deer to give up the fight for life because of his age? (US News & World Report)

Johns Hopkins neurologist asks leaders to question ‘futile and expensive’ care in terminally ill adults and infants. (EurekaAlert)

Patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) often do not receive adequate end-of-life care and are unhappy with the medical decisions made as their conditions worsen, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). The findings indicate that end-of-life care should be improved to meet the needs of CKD patients. (Newswise)

A new trend to harvest transplant organs from people whose hearts have just stopped — but may not be yet brain dead — has underlined the “pressing need” for federal legislation to define exactly when someone has perished, a leading medical ethicist argues. (Windsor Star)

It’s a conversation that most people dread, doctors and patients alike. The cancer is terminal, time is short, and tough decisions loom — about accepting treatment or rejecting it, and choosing where and how to die. (New York Times)

JAMA (Vol. 302; No. 24; December 23, 2009) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:

• “Medical Care for the Final Years of Life: ‘When You’re 83, It’s Not Going to be 20 Years’” by David B. Reuben, 2686-2694.
• “Improving the Delivery of Preventative Services to Medicare Beneficiaries” by Leonard I. Lesser and Andrew W. Bazemore, 2699-2700.
• “Clinical Care in the Aging Century- Announcing ‘Care of the Aging Patient: From Evidence to Action” by C. Seth Landefeld, Margaret A. Winker, and Bruce Chernof; 2703-2704.
• “Efficacy Data and HPV Vaccination Studies” by Norman W. Baylor and Melinda Wharton, 2658-2659.
• “Marketing and the HPV Vaccine” by L. Stewart Massad, 2660.
• “Scientists Target Cocaine Addiction” by Bridget M. Kuehn, 2641-2642.

Legendary philosopher Peter Singer once imagined a scenario where a pill could double human lifespan, and argued that such a world would never be as happy as one without the medicine. Science fiction author and philosopher Russell Blackford disagrees. (io9)

Videos that depict different options for end-of-life care may help terminally ill cancer patients decide on what they want, a new study suggests. (Reuters)

Peter Singer has argued that we should not proceed with a hypothetical life-extension drug, based on a scenario in which developing the drug would fail to achieve the greatest sum of happiness over time. However, this is the wrong test. (IEET)

I spent a day last month shadowing hospice workers from the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. With each visit to the homes of four patients whose lives were ebbing, the caring, patience, attention and expertise I observed left me wondering why all medicine is not like this — focused on the whole person, not just a disease. (New York Times)

Journal of Academic Ethics (Volume 7, Numbers 1-2, June 2009) is now available by subscription only.

Articles include:

• “Protecting Human Dignity in Research Involving Humans” by Thomas De Koninck, 17-25.
• “Reflections on My Experience in Human Research Ethics” by K. G. Davey, 27-31.
• “Moral Integrity and Academic Research” by J. Angelo Corlett, 45-49.
• “The Ethics of Conducting Community-Engaged Homelessness Research” by Vivien Runnels, Elizabeth Hay, Elyse Sevigny, and Paddi O’Hara; 57-68.
• “End of Life Pediatric Research: What About the Ethics?” by Danielle Laudy, 87-91.
• “Health Research in Complex Emergencies: A Humanitarian Imperative” by John D. Pringle and Donald C. Cole, 115-123.

The family of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who was artificially kept alive for 15 years, say they feel both heartbreak and vindication over the news this week that a Belgian man thought to be in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) was fully conscious for two decades. (ABC News)

Every medical study ever conducted has concluded that 100 percent of all Americans will eventually die. This comes as no great surprise, but the amount of money being spent at the very end of people’s lives probably will. Last year, Medicare paid $50 billion just for doctor and hospital bills during the last two months of patients’ lives - that’s more than the budget of the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Education. (CBS News)

Earlier this month, Ohio prison officials announced they will abandon the three-drug cocktail for lethal injection in favor of a single injection of a massive dose of barbiturates. If the execution team is unable to find a suitable vein, the drug will be injected into an inmate’s large muscle. (Cleveland.com)

More than 1,000 people have travelled to Switzerland to end their lives. But what is it really like inside the world’s first assisted suicide centre? (The Guardian)

Call for Papers
“Love at the End of Life”
2010 Film & History Conference: Representations of Love in Film and Television
November 11-14, 2010
Hyatt Regency Milwaukee
Extended Deadline: March 1, 2010

How does the understanding of love change with the death and dying experience? This area explores films that deal with love in the end of life experience for the dying, caregivers and their loved ones. Love at the End of Life can explore many themes related to love, including love for oneself in the face of existential suffering, or a new understanding of love in the face of one’s mortality. There are a wide range of films to explore in this area in a cross-section of genres, ranging from successful box office films such as Love Story (1970) and Whose Life is it, Anyway? (1982) to documentaries such as to more recent films such as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).

This area, comprising multiple panels, welcomes papers and panel proposals that examine all forms and genres of films featuring love at the end of life. Possibilities include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

*   Love and Sacrifice in Pediatric End of Life (e.g. Lorenzo’s Oil)
*   Love and Family at the End of Life (e.g. Marvin’s Room, My Life, Philadelphia)
*   Closure and Forgiveness at the End of Life (e.g. Magnolia, Truly, Madly, Deeply)
*   Love and Existential Suffering in the film, “Wit:
*   Love and the End of Life Experience in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
*   The Dying Friend: (e.g. Silverlake Life, The Doctor, Fried Green Tomatoes; Amadeus)
*   Assisted Suicide Requests and Euthanasia: (e.g. Arsenic and Old Lace, Dax’s Case, The Sea Inside? Million Dollar Baby)
*   Love and Death in times of War (Schindler’s List; Apocalypse Now, M*A*S*H)
*   Documentary Films About End of Life (e.g. Silverlake Life: The View From Here (1993)

Please send your 200-word proposal by e-mail only to the area chair:

M. Sara Rosenthal, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Bioethics
Director, Program for Bioethics
University of Kentucky
Email: msrose2@email.uky.edu

Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website (www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory).

A loving father last week abandoned a court battle to save his disabled child’s life. Why did he change his mind and what wider ethical questions has this tragic case raised? (Telegraph)