Lecture: Advance Consent, Critical Interests and Dementia Research

Dr. Tom Buller, Illinois State University

Please join the Center for Ethics in the Professions in a discussion about advance directives in the context of research. Although advance directives have become a familiar instrument within the context of treatment, there has been minimal support for their expansion into the context of research. In this paper, Dr. Buller argues that the principle of precedent autonomy that grants a competent person the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment when later incompetent, also grants a competent person the right to consent to research than is greater than minimal risk. An examination of the principle of precedent autonomy reveals that a future-binding research decision is within the scope of a competent person’s critical interests, if the decision is consistent with what the person believes gives her life intrinsic value.

Tom Buller is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Illinois State University. His main research interests are in Bioethics and Neuroethics.