When the final hour comes: End of life care, ethics, costs, and the role of the media
Round Table Theme
Advances in life sciences provide life-prolonging treatments that could stretch our life span beyond borders once unimaginable, but European countries are deeply split over how to treat terminally ill or non curable patients. The public debate is even more dividing and emotional when it comes to euthanasia and its legislation. These matters raise complex ethical, legal and practical questions. How do we define life and death and where’s the dividing line? Who should decide for non-competent patients, like individuals on long-term coma? Should physicians always seek to prolong life? At any cost? These and other questions will challenge scientists, GPs, philosophers and the public during the first session of this event.
Session one:
Gianna Milano (moderator, freelance science journalist, Italy)
Steven Laureys (Coma Science Group, Liège University, Belgium)
'Measuring consciousness in coma and vegetative state'
Carlo Alberto Defanti (Azienda Ospedaliera Niguarda Ca' Granda, Italy)
'The concepts of Brain death and Persistent Vegetative State: similarities and
differences'
Penney Lewis (School of Law/Centre of Medical Law and Ethics King's College, UK)
'European perspectives on legal and ethical issues in end of life care'
Iona Heath (Royal College of General Practitioners, UK)
'End of life "If it be not now, yet it will come'
But a debate on these themes would not suffice without taking into account end of life narratives, since various surveys show that for European citizens TV and print media are still the main source of information about science related issues. Hence in the second session four European journalists and the audience will confront on a set of issues strictly related to the first ones. How is the public debate on end of life care framed? How do the media tell end of life stories? And what’s the role of the media: to inform or to orient?
Session two:
Gianna Milano (moderator, freelance science journalist, Italy)
Alison Abbott (Nature journal, Germany)
'How scientific journals may influence the end-of-life debate'
José María Valderas (Investigación y Ciencia journal, Spain)
'The end of life according to science communication journals'
Marina Verna (La Stampa newspaper, Italy)
'Telling stories to catch attention'