SAFEGUARD
FOR LIFE-ENDING DECISIONS
ADVANCE DIRECTIVE FOR MEDICAL CARE
When making life-ending decisions, the most
important person
(or former person) to consider is the one whose life it is.
Our deaths belong to us more deeply than anything else we can own.
Thus the first death-planning document must
come from ourselves.
We are the ones who will either go on experiencing life or draw our
lives to a close.
And when we consider our lives at any given moment,
we usually decide that we want to continue living.
But there might come a time when we decide
that the burdens of continuing to live are greater than
the benefits we or others derive from our continued existence.
All of us should formulate our philosophies of
living and dying
while we are still in good health and able to think clearly.
And we should put our decisions about life and death into 'living
wills',
better called "advance directives for medical care".
The most complete advance directive will address
such matters as:
appointing good proxies, decline of quality of life, levels of
personhood,
medical costs, nursing-home placement, & ideal pathways toward
death.
Here is a portal for exploring all dimensions of a comprehensive
advance directive:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/P-AD.html
HOW AN ADVANCE DIRECTIVE WILL DISCOURAGE
IRRATIONAL SUICIDE AND OTHER FORMS OF PREMATURE DEATH
Because irrational suicide is often an impulsive and
capricious act,
the very process of preparing an advance directive for medical care
will help the patient who is inclined toward killing himself
to consider carefully all of the alternative pathways toward death.
He or she will consider the settled values that are worth preserving
as well as the burdens of life that sometimes make is easy to say,
"Stop the world, I want to get off!"
When an advance directive lays out the ideal pathway
toward death,
then relatives who want to get rid of the patient
will not be able to rationalize their own harmful aims
by saying that the patient wanted to die anyway.
An advance directive prevents premature death
by stating as fully as possible beforehand
under what circumstances the patient would want to live
and under what conditions death
would be a better choice.
Also an advance directive will select the best
proxies,
those persons who are best able to carry forward the decisions of the
patient.
And any relatives whose motives might be suspect
will be excluded from the decision-making process by not being selected
as proxies.
Thus the death chosen will be at
the best time and by
the best means
—as
selected by the patient, not by anyone else, who might have
different values.
created January 17,
2007; revised 1-26-2008