home   genetic news   bioinformatics   biotechnology   literature   journals   ethics   positions   events   sitemap
 
  HUM-MOLGEN -> Events -> Meetings and Conferences  
 

What Is a Good Death? Can Science and Medicine Tell Us?

 
  October 04, 2015  
     
 


Battle of Ideas, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
5.30pm-6.45pm, Saturday 17 October 2015


A public discussion of science, medicine, death and dying taking place at the Barbican Centre, as part of the Battle over Life and Death strand of the Battle of Ideas festival.

In his bestselling book, Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End, Atul Gawande - surgeon and Reith lecturer - queries whether his profession has become so fixated on attempting to 'stave off death' that it has 'no idea when to stop' for terminally ill patients who may not benefit from expensive and intrusive end-of-life treatments. Earlier this year, Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, provoked heated discussion by suggesting that cancer represents 'the best death' for most patients. Last year, a report (.pdf 1.56 MB) by the Royal College of Physicians concluded that large numbers of patients were 'dying badly' in hospital.

In the medieval period there was a clear prescription for what constituted a good death, set out in manuals known as Ars Moriendi, centred around the necessity of being spiritually and materially prepared to die 'gladly and wilfully' at God's choosing. From the Ancient Greeks through to 'Dulce et decorum est...' the concept of a noble death in battle for one's country held an equally powerful cultural influence. Gawande notes that the twentieth-century trend for death to occur in the hospital - away from the home, family and loved ones - is being slowly reversed, as patients seek palliative care at home or in hospices. Movements such as the Order of the Good Death, run by US morticians, seek to demystify 'the death anxiety of modern culture' in order to make 'death a part of your life'.

Nevertheless, the strength of opposition to assisted dying indicates that for many a 'good death' represents more than the avoidance of suffering. And while mental-health campaigners argue that removing the stigma around suicide is a vital tool for prevention, in Japan there are concerns that a cultural validation of 'honourable suicide' accounts for its startlingly high incidence. Meanwhile, debates about presumed consent for organ donation and the display of human remains indicate that taboos around mortality have proven remarkably robust, even in more secular times.

Where do these trends leave us, in terms of deciding whether a particular death is good - or indeed, bad? Health officials have long used the measure of the 'quality-adjusted life year' to allocate limited resources when avoiding and deferring deaths - if our response to death is equivocal, will such stark calculus enter wider policy and everyday life? What becomes of our mortality and our morality in a world where death is thought of as a legitimate option?
 
 
Organized by: Battle of Ideas
Invited Speakers: Dr Jules Montague (Consultant Neurologist at the Royal Free Hospital, and writer for the Guardian and Independent newspapers)

Chrissie Giles (Senior Editor at the Wellcome Trust, and Commissioning Editor at Mosaic)

Dr Richard Smith (Chair of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh and former Editor of the British Medical Journal)

Dr Kevin Yuill (Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Sunderland's Department of Culture, and author of the book Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case against Legalisation)

Helen Birtwistle (history and politics teacher, and Associate Fellow of the Institute of Ideas)

[All of the speakers listed above are confirmed]
 
Deadline for Abstracts: N/A
 
Registration: Details of how to book for the Battle of Ideas festival can be found online here.
E-mail: sstarr@progress.org.uk
 
   
 
home   genetic news   bioinformatics   biotechnology   literature   journals   ethics   positions   events   sitemap
 
 
 

Generated by meetings and positions 5.0 by Kai Garlipp
WWW: Kai Garlipp, Frank S. Zollmann.
7.0 © 1995- HUM-MOLGEN. All rights reserved. Liability, Copyright and Imprint.