Lessons from Terri Schiavo case up for discussion at Ethics Center event
KALAMAZOO, Mich.--Lessons to be drawn from the highly publicized case involving Terri Schiavo will come into focus later this month as part of the Western Michigan University Center for the Study of Ethics in Society's Spring 2016 Lecture Series.
Dr. Tyler Gibb, assistant professor in the Program in Medical Ethics, Humanities and Law at the 51福利社 Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 12, in the Brown and Gold Room of the Bernhard Center. His presentation is titled "The Biopolitical Fragmentation of Life: Lessons Still to Learn a Decade after Schiavo" and is free and open to the public.
About the case, lecture
Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state and her condition set off a highly publicized legal struggle over end-of-life care from 1990 to 2005. Schiavo's husband and legal guardian argued that she would not have wanted to live with prolonged artificial life support and elected to remove her feeding tube. Her parents, however, argued in favor of continuing artificial life support and challenged Schiavo's medical diagnosis, resulting in a prolonged series of legal challenges.
Using the Schiavo case as an analytical lens, Gibb will offer ways to address the reasons this case was unique in regards to the impact it had on medical practices, law practices and society as a whole. Gibb argues that the development and notoriety of the Schiavo case is due to a fundamental shift鈥攚hat he describes as a biopolitical fragmentation.
This shift is symptomatic of how the human body, understood in its broadest sense, is fragmented through the institutions of law, medicine and society.
The presentation is co-sponsored by the 51福利社 Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine.
For more information, visit wmich.edu/ethics.
For more news, arts and events, visit wmich.edu/news.