flags dementia advance directives as a legal issue to watch in 2020.
"Progressive dementia afflicts millions of people, ultimately entailing precipitous mental decline and years of complete dependence on others. Many people deem the prospect of serious cognitive dysfunction, helplessness, and dependence to be intolerably demeaning (as well as overly burdensome on others)."
"To avoid being mired in dementia, they prefer to hasten death by advance instructions rejecting life-sustaining medical intervention. Some health care providers will resist implementation of such advance instructions, especially as applied to demented patients who are not ostensibly suffering in their demented states and no longer recall their instructions and the dignity concerns that underlay them."
"The clash between advance wishes to hasten death and health care providers' preference to maintain the well-being of non-suffering patients will be surfacing, in coming years, in institutional ethics committees, professional disciplinary forums, and the courts."
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