Even as Americans are coming to terms with the complexity of end-of-life issues and the challenges of medical technologies, the lack of a worldview consensus on these basic questions reveals a dangerous confusion at every level of our national life. Doctors, lawyers, philosophers, and the public at large are divided over the most basic questions of human dignity, human life, and how to make decisions of right and wrong when these are essentially questions of life and death.
The tragedy of Terri Schiavo catapulted these questions into the nation's consciousness. Nevertheless, it is by no means clear that the nation learned anything of significance through that tragedy and the attendant controversy. Indeed, a large number of Americans seem to be relieved that the tragedy of Terri Schiavo is safely out of mind and off the headlines.
Lennard J. Davis argues that the controversy over Terri Schiavo revealed a dangerous lack of "biocultural literacy" among the American people. Davis serves as Professor of English, Disability and Human Development, and Medical Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he also directs Project Biocultures. The complexity of Davis's professorial title indicates something of the strangeness of his academic post.
In "Life, Death, and Biocultural Literacy," published in the January 6, 2006 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Davis argues that the absence of biocultural literacy in the academy and in the general public leaves us all unable to cope with some of our most pressing contemporary questions.
Davis begins his essay by looking back to Victorian literature in which novelists such as Charles Dickens portrayed death as the moment when one's identity "often comes to fruition." He contrasts this with today's clinical context of death. "But while Dickens had metaphorical hearts and angels to enhance self-revelation at the time of death, we have ventilators, feeding tubes, and defibrillators. Death for us isn't so much a final revelation of identity as a series of decisions preceding a finality." As Davis concludes, "Our sense of identity is much less clear than it was for people in the past."
In that assessment, Davis is clearly on to something. Americans are no longer united in a worldview shaped by Christian truth that establishes identity and human dignity in Creation and in the reality of the image of God in every single human being.
Looking at the contemporary debate, Davis notes the contrast between liberal and conservative arguments. "Liberals might argue that one's identity ceases to exist with the loss of a certain level of consciousness, accompanied by the necessity of mechanical life support, such as a feeding tube and a ventilator." On the other hand, "The religious right contends that one has an identity as long as one's heart is beating, regardless of one's cognitive function or the need for external life support."
Accordingly, some persons looked at Terri Schiavo and responded with the fear that they might at some point be reduced to being a "vegetable" with no consciousness or personal identity, while others looked at the same situation and feared the termination of life while one's brain is still functioning and death is otherwise not imminent.
As Davis understands, a surge of interest in "living wills" was one practical result of the controversy. Nevertheless, these documents often fail to deliver on their promises, are often ignored by medical professionals, and often fail to protect the interests of the one who adopted the document in the first place.
Davis seems to believe that a greater depth of knowledge in all the related fields of medicine, technology, biology, religion, psychology, and law would lead to a better understanding of the moral questions involved in such crises. Beyond this, he would add disability studies and the relatively new field of bioethics.
There is undoubtedly some truth in his assessment. For example, when Davis asserts that most Americans "know very little about biology, don't keep up on recent developments in neurology, and barely know the difference between a coma and a persistent vegetative state," he is clearly describing a reality we can recognize.
