"I'll Never Come to Resemble this Disaster": The Baconian Character of Physician Aid in Dying and Its Limits in Addressing End of Life Suffering
Wilson Ricketts, MD, Resident Physician, UCLA
In recent years there has been increasing approval of physician-assisted suicide (also known as physician aid in dying) as a means of addressing suffering in the setting of incurable disease. This has been evidenced by numerous articles published in the academic and lay literature as well as the legal expansion of the practice in the United States. Supporters of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) view it to be an ideal means of alleviating intractable end of life suffering because it promises to preserve patients' dignity and autonomy while preventing intolerable physical and emotional distress. However, the practice’s expansion has not been without controversy and has raised significant moral questions about the limits and purpose of medicine.
In this talk I will examine the ethical and moral issues surrounding PAS by exploring the cultural forces and assumptions that have shaped our modern medical context. Following bioethicist Gerald McKenny, I will contend that the moral commitments of modern medicine have been significantly shaped by the thought of Francis Bacon. Some of the central ethical dilemmas presented by end of life care have a direct causal relationship to what McKenny calls “the Baconian project”: an impulse within modern medicine to control the body with technology and free human beings from natural constraints. While PAS may appear to be an answer to these dilemmas, I will argue that closer examination of the practice reveals that it is itself an extension of the Baconian project. As such, it is profoundly conditioned by the same problems it purports to solve, rendering it an insufficient solution to the dilemmas posed by end of life suffering. Along the way I will draw illustrations from the work of novelist Choi Jin-Young and conclude by building on insights from McKenny as well as Alasdair MacIntyre, Allen Verhey, and others. Ultimately, I will gesture towards a way of reimagining health and the practice of medicine that can embody a better and truer remedy to the cruelties and indignities confronting those who live and die in the modern world.
In this talk I will examine the ethical and moral issues surrounding PAS by exploring the cultural forces and assumptions that have shaped our modern medical context. Following bioethicist Gerald McKenny, I will contend that the moral commitments of modern medicine have been significantly shaped by the thought of Francis Bacon. Some of the central ethical dilemmas presented by end of life care have a direct causal relationship to what McKenny calls “the Baconian project”: an impulse within modern medicine to control the body with technology and free human beings from natural constraints. While PAS may appear to be an answer to these dilemmas, I will argue that closer examination of the practice reveals that it is itself an extension of the Baconian project. As such, it is profoundly conditioned by the same problems it purports to solve, rendering it an insufficient solution to the dilemmas posed by end of life suffering. Along the way I will draw illustrations from the work of novelist Choi Jin-Young and conclude by building on insights from McKenny as well as Alasdair MacIntyre, Allen Verhey, and others. Ultimately, I will gesture towards a way of reimagining health and the practice of medicine that can embody a better and truer remedy to the cruelties and indignities confronting those who live and die in the modern world.