The Cellar - Medical Ethics Seminar

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Last week’s arrest of the physician and two nurses for administration of lethal doses of drugs to four elderly patients in the aftermath of Katrina has raised broader questions than a battle about euthanasia. The case has to do with what society determines about professional duty and responsibility in the most desperate of conditions. This seminar wrestles with the haunting question, Is it possible when disaster strikes and the patient is destined to endure a torturous death that ethical norms may justifiably change? Is it possible that the circumstantial dysfunction may lead to a different “state of nature,” requiring new thought about the social contract?

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the conclusion of the seminar, participants should be able to:

1. Deliberate about whether the legal system is adequate to decide the ethical and professional intent of compassion and mercy in the face of chaos.

2. Describe several paradigms of response in the history of humankind.

3. Identify basic parameters for the reflective conscience in the midst of an event where “the horrific nature of death by disaster turns on a question of how we choose to die.”