When choosing to create an advanced directive, that person is making the autonomous choice to decide the quality of life that they wish to maintain. Should something happen that eliminates that possibility, the advanced directive gives the care-providers a clear cut instruction manual as to how they should proceed. For example, say someone states in their advanced directive that if they were to ever lose their cognitive functioning, they would not wish to receive any further life-saving interventions (Buchanan). Then, should this situation ever arise, the doctors know exactly what to do and what not to do. This eliminates possible distress or argumentation between family members on what they think the patient “would want”. I recognize some of the issues mentioned by Buchanan in his paper on advanced directives, issues concerning personal identity. These issues stem from the idea that should there be something that causes a person to be severely neurologically damaged, but not to the point of death or vegetative states, the ‘new’ person might not want what the ‘first’ person wanted. The new person might seem to be completely content in their goings-on, even though quite impaired, thus making it seem immoral to act in a way that would end (or at least not prolong) their life
When choosing to create an advanced directive, that person is making the autonomous choice to decide the quality of life that they wish to maintain. Should something happen that eliminates that possibility, the advanced directive gives the care-providers a clear cut instruction manual as to how they should proceed. For example, say someone states in their advanced directive that if they were to ever lose their cognitive functioning, they would not wish to receive any further life-saving interventions (Buchanan). Then, should this situation ever arise, the doctors know exactly what to do and what not to do. This eliminates possible distress or argumentation between family members on what they think the patient “would want”. I recognize some of the issues mentioned by Buchanan in his paper on advanced directives, issues concerning personal identity. These issues stem from the idea that should there be something that causes a person to be severely neurologically damaged, but not to the point of death or vegetative states, the ‘new’ person might not want what the ‘first’ person wanted. The new person might seem to be completely content in their goings-on, even though quite impaired, thus making it seem immoral to act in a way that would end (or at least not prolong) their life