[Image: Ulysses and the Sirens: John William Waterhouse, 1891: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne]
We shouldn’t underestimate Homer’s maintain on us. Whether or not or not we’ve ever learn him, he created a lot of our ruling memes.
I don’t suppose it’s fanciful (although it may be formidable) to counsel that he, and the entire heroic ethos, are partly accountable for our uncritical adoption of a mannequin of autonomy which doesn’t do justice to the form of creatures we actually are. That’s a giant declare. I can’t justify it right here. However one manifestation of that adoption is our exaggerated respect for advance directives – declarations made when one is capacitous about how one want to be handled if incapacitous, and that are binding if incapacity supervenes if (in English legislation) the declaration is ‘legitimate and relevant.’ 1.
I believe that a few of this respect comes from the earliest and most vibrant advance directive story ever: Odysseus and the Sirens.
Circe warns Odysseus concerning the sirens, and the best way to escape them. She’s very particular concerning the risks. The tune of the Sirens intoxicates all who hear it. It renders them incapacitous, with calamitous results:
‘Whoever attracts too shut, off guard, and catches the Sirens’ voices within the air – no crusing house for him, no spouse rising to fulfill him, no blissful youngsters beaming up at their father’s face. The excessive thrilling tune of the Sirens will transfix him, lolling there of their meadow, spherical them heaps of corpses rotting away, rags of pores and skin shrivelling on their bones….’2
Odysseus, as totally knowledgeable as any ethics committee would need him to be, decides that he’d desire to keep away from that destiny. He follows Circe’s recommendation, telling his crew to plug their ears with wax and tie him to the mast in order that he (who’s going to stay unplugged), can’t bounce overboard and swim to destruction. Then comes a really express advance directive, stipulating what the crew ought to do when the Sirens’ tune overwhelms him:
‘…if I plead, commanding you to set me free, then lash me sooner, rope on urgent rope.’3
What occurs is, in fact, exactly what Odysseus has anticipated. Odysseus hears the ‘ravishing voices’ of the Sirens and his coronary heart ‘throb[s] to hear longer.’ 4 He ‘sign[s]the crew with frowns to set [him] free’, however they row all of the tougher, and Perimedes and Eurylochus bind him tighter.5
If the formalities of execution had been complied with, Odysseus’ advance directive would definitely be regarded by an English decide as ‘legitimate and relevant’, and thus as binding because the ropes that lashed him to the mast.6 Perimedes and Eurylochus would have had a watertight defence to legal or civil proceedings for assault.
It’s an excellent and memorable story – and doubtless the one advance directive story that most individuals know. It’s a thoroughgoing endorsement of advance directives. If there had been no directive Odysseus would have rotted within the Sirens’ meadow and Penelope would by no means have held out towards the odious suitors. However it’s deceptive. No less than within the context of the withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy (the place advance directives are most dramatically related), it’s uncommon to have anticipated the long run medical circumstances and the prognosis and the therapeutic choices as precisely as Odysseus anticipated the hazard of the Sirens. And, additional, we all know that when sufferers are literally going through the state of affairs they so feared, they have a tendency to seek out that their state of affairs is extra bearable than they thought they might.7 That didn’t apply to Odysseus.
Homeric tales are splendid as tales: they aren’t all the time useful as paradigms. We must always beware the Siren voices of advance directives.
References
1. Psychological Capability Act 2006 s. 25(1): see textual content at notice 6 under
2. E-book 12, line 50 (all citations are from Robert Fagles’ translation of The Odyssey, Penguin, 2002).
3. E-book 12, line 179
4.E-book 12, line 209
5. E-book 12, line 210
6. See Psychological Capability Act 2005 sections 24-26:
Part 24: Advance selections to refuse therapy: Common
(1)“Advance choice” means a call made by an individual (“P”), after he has reached 18 and when he has capability to take action, that if—
(a) at a later time and in such circumstances as he could specify, a specified therapy is proposed to be carried out or continued by an individual offering well being look after him, and
(b) at the moment he lacks capability to consent to the finishing up or continuation of the therapy,
the desired therapy is to not be carried out or continued.
(2) For the needs of subsection (1)(a), a call could also be considered specifying a therapy or circumstances regardless that expressed in layman’s phrases.
(3) P could withdraw or alter an advance choice at any time when he has capability to take action.
(4) A withdrawal (together with a partial withdrawal) needn’t be in writing.
(5) An alteration of an advance choice needn’t be in writing (until part 25(5) applies in relation to the choice ensuing from the alteration).
Part 25: Validity and applicability of advance selections
(1) An advance choice doesn’t have an effect on the legal responsibility which an individual could incur for finishing up or persevering with a therapy in relation to P until the choice is on the materials time—
(a) legitimate, and
(b) relevant to the therapy.
(2) An advance choice will not be legitimate if P—
(a) has withdrawn the choice at a time when he had capability to take action,
(b) has, beneath a long-lasting energy of legal professional created after the advance choice was made, conferred authority on the donee (or, if multiple, any of them) to offer or refuse consent to the therapy to which the advance choice relates, or
(c) has finished anything clearly inconsistent with the advance choice remaining his fastened choice.
(3) An advance choice will not be relevant to the therapy in query if on the materials time P has capability to offer or refuse consent to it.
(4) An advance choice will not be relevant to the therapy in query if—
(a) that therapy will not be the therapy specified within the advance choice,
(b) any circumstances specified within the advance choice are absent, or
(c) there are cheap grounds for believing that circumstances exist which P didn’t anticipate on the time of the advance choice and which might have affected his choice had he anticipated them.
(5) An advance choice will not be relevant to life-sustaining therapy until—
(a) the choice is verified by an announcement by P to the impact that it’s to use to that therapy even when life is in danger, and
(b) the choice and assertion adjust to subsection (6).
(6) A call or assertion complies with this subsection provided that—
(a) it’s in writing,
(b) it’s signed by P or by one other particular person in P’s presence and by P’s path,
(c) the signature is made or acknowledged by P within the presence of a witness, and
(d) the witness indicators it, or acknowledges his signature, in P’s presence.
(7) The existence of any lasting energy of legal professional aside from one in every of an outline talked about in subsection (2)(b) doesn’t stop the advance choice from being considered legitimate and relevant.
Part 26: Impact of advance selections
(1) If P has made an advance choice which is—
(a) legitimate, and
(b) relevant to a therapy,
the choice has impact as if he had made it, and had had capability to make it, on the time when the query arises whether or not the therapy ought to be carried out or continued.
(2) An individual doesn’t incur legal responsibility for finishing up or persevering with the therapy until, on the time, he’s happy that an advance choice exists which is legitimate and relevant to the therapy.
(3) An individual doesn’t incur legal responsibility for the results of withholding or withdrawing a therapy from P if, on the time, he fairly believes that an advance choice exists which is legitimate and relevant to the therapy.
(4) The courtroom could make a declaration as as to if an advance choice—
(a) exists;
(b) is legitimate;
(c) is relevant to a therapy.
(5) Nothing in an obvious advance choice stops an individual—
(a) offering life-sustaining therapy, or
(b) doing any act he fairly believes to be vital to forestall a severe deterioration in P’s situation,
whereas a call as respects any related subject is sought from the courtroom.
7. See, as an illustration, Emily Walsh (2020) ‘Cognitive Transformation, Dementia, and the Ethical Weight of Advance Directives’, American Journal of Bioethics, 20:8, 54-64; Matilda Carter (2022) ‘Advance Directives: The Precept of Figuring out Authenticity’ Hastings Heart Report 52 (1): 32-41
