Join the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions for the lecture “Advance Consent, Critical Interests, and Dementia Research,” a discussion about advance directives in the context of research involving patients with dementia. The lecture will be held from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Monday, November 10, 2014 in the auditorium of The McCormick Tribune Campus Center.

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 his paper, presenter Tom 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 his or her life intrinsic value.

Buller is Department of Philosophy professor and chair at Illinois State University. His main research interests are in bioethics and neuroethics.