{"title":"Can an effective end-of-life intervention for advanced dementia be viewed as moral?","authors":"Stanley A Terman","doi":"10.1002/dad2.12528","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Many people dread prolonged dying with suffering in the terminal illness, advanced dementia. To successfully facilitate a timely dying, advance directives must be effective and acceptable. This article considers whether authorities, including treating physicians, can accept as moral, the effective intervention that ceases caregivers' assistance with oral feeding and hydrating. The article presents eight criticisms and \"alternate views\" regarding ceasing assisted feeding/hydrating. It draws on perspectives from clinical medicine, law, ethics, and religion. The conflict is between (A) people's core beliefs that reflect cultural norms and religious teachings regarding what is moral versus (B) patients' autonomous right of self-determination and claim right to avoid suffering. The article presents each side as strongly as possible. Accepting the intervention as moral could allow patients a peaceful and timely dying from patients' underlying disease. Confidence in future success can deter patients and their surrogates from considering a hastened dying in earlier stages of dementia.</p>","PeriodicalId":53226,"journal":{"name":"Alzheimer''s and Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment and Disease Monitoring","volume":"16 1","pages":"e12528"},"PeriodicalIF":4.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10941521/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Alzheimer''s and Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment and Disease Monitoring","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1002/dad2.12528","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CLINICAL NEUROLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Many people dread prolonged dying with suffering in the terminal illness, advanced dementia. To successfully facilitate a timely dying, advance directives must be effective and acceptable. This article considers whether authorities, including treating physicians, can accept as moral, the effective intervention that ceases caregivers' assistance with oral feeding and hydrating. The article presents eight criticisms and "alternate views" regarding ceasing assisted feeding/hydrating. It draws on perspectives from clinical medicine, law, ethics, and religion. The conflict is between (A) people's core beliefs that reflect cultural norms and religious teachings regarding what is moral versus (B) patients' autonomous right of self-determination and claim right to avoid suffering. The article presents each side as strongly as possible. Accepting the intervention as moral could allow patients a peaceful and timely dying from patients' underlying disease. Confidence in future success can deter patients and their surrogates from considering a hastened dying in earlier stages of dementia.
期刊介绍:
Alzheimer''s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring (DADM) is an open access, peer-reviewed, journal from the Alzheimer''s Association® that will publish new research that reports the discovery, development and validation of instruments, technologies, algorithms, and innovative processes. Papers will cover a range of topics interested in the early and accurate detection of individuals with memory complaints and/or among asymptomatic individuals at elevated risk for various forms of memory disorders. The expectation for published papers will be to translate fundamental knowledge about the neurobiology of the disease into practical reports that describe both the conceptual and methodological aspects of the submitted scientific inquiry. Published topics will explore the development of biomarkers, surrogate markers, and conceptual/methodological challenges. Publication priority will be given to papers that 1) describe putative surrogate markers that accurately track disease progression, 2) biomarkers that fulfill international regulatory requirements, 3) reports from large, well-characterized population-based cohorts that comprise the heterogeneity and diversity of asymptomatic individuals and 4) algorithmic development that considers multi-marker arrays (e.g., integrated-omics, genetics, biofluids, imaging, etc.) and advanced computational analytics and technologies.