Creighton Professor Edits Book on Ethical Considerations of Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer’s disease afflicts nearly 12 million people worldwide, and that number is rapidly increasing. Ruth B. Purtilo, Ph.D., director of Creighton University’s Center for Health Policy and Ethics, led an international dialogue addressing major ethical and scientific concerns about the diagnosis and prognosis of the disease.

These dialogues resulted in "Ethical Foundations of Palliative Care for Alzheimer Disease," recently published by Johns Hopkins University Press, edited by Purtilo the Dr. C.C. and Mabel. L. Criss professor of Ethics, and and Henk A.M.J. ten Have, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Medical Ethics at the University Medical Centre Nijmegen, The Netherlands. ten Have is also the director of the Division of Ethics of Science and Technology, UNESCO, Paris.

"Ethical Foundations of Palliative Care for Alzheimer Disease" is written for health care workers, ethicists, public policy makers and anyone interested in the ethical dilemmas facing professionals, caregivers and society. In the book, leading ethicists and clinicians from the United States and Europe explore key societal issues surrounding the disease.

People with Alzheimer’s disease are living longer than those who have been afflicted with the disease in the past. They require interventions for quality-of-life issues associated with palliative, or long-term, care.

In her foreword, Christine K. Cassel, M.D., president of the American Board of Internal Medicine, writes that the "palliative care movement in the United States has reminded modern medicine of human mortality and has shown us that even though we cannot cure many illnesses, it is not true that ‘there is nothing left to do.’"

Other Creighton contributors to the book, include: Roger A. Brumback, M.D., Elizabeth Furlong, R.N., Ph.D., J.D., Amy M. Haddad, R.N., Ph.D., Judith Lee Kissell, Ph.D., Richard L. O’Brien, M.D., Winifred J. Ellenchild Pinch, R.N., Ed.D., Patricio F. Reyes, M.D., Linda S. Scheirton, Ph.D., and Jos V. M. Welie, M.Med.S., J.D., Ph.D.