Kibbitznest Liberal Arts Discussion Series

Americans overwhelmingly say they want to die at home, surrounded by loved ones. Yet most of us will die in hospital ICUs, often after aggressive and unwanted interventions. How did we get here? No one likes to think about their death, but it is essential we do so. Not only for the sake of living a good life, but also for the sake of achieving the ever elusive "good death."

Drawing on the Catholic moral theology of Thomas Aquinas and the phenomenology of contemporary bioethicist Jeffrey Bishop, writer and University of Chicago professor Jonathan Gleason will lead us through a discussion of the controversial and instructive case of Dr. William Husel—an Emergency Room doctor accused of murdering 36 of his patients. Husel's trial exposed fundamental tensions in American death and dying: the gap between popular representations of quick, peaceful death and its medical realities, the ethical minefield of end-of-life treatments,…