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It may soon be possible to diagnose neurodegenerative disorders, such as early onset Alzheimer's disease, with a high degree of accuracy well before these conditions become symptomatic. In a carefully argued and thought-provoking piece, Dena Davis (see page 543, Editor's choice) maintains that preemptive suicide may be a rational option for those confronted with a preclinical diagnosis of impending dementia, and consequently that withholding the results of dementia research until effective treatments become available constitutes an unjustified infringement on patient autonomy. If suicide is indeed a rational course of action for some people diagnosed with dementia, then contrary to received wisdom, biomarker information indicating a high risk of dementia may be ‘actionable’ even if there is no known treatment for the condition. Preemptive suicide, Davis argues, may be motivated and justified by a mixture of other-regarding and self-regarding considerations. These include, inter alia, the wish to avoid imposing significant financial or psychological hardships on one's family, the unwillingness to live without the capacities for meaningful independence or agency, and the desire to write a final chapter that is consistent with one's stable values and that does not distort or eclipse the overarching narrative of one's life.
Dementia raises an ethical dilemma that does not arise in connection with other diseases with respect to which many believe suicide is a rational course of action (such as terminal cancer). This dilemma arises from the fact that a person with impending dementia cannot wait until the disease takes hold to issue and carry out a decision to end his or her life, since dementia destroys the capacities that underpin rational decision-making. Because jurisdictions permitting suicide require, quite reasonably, that a …
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