<p style="line-height: 19.0400009155273px;">Reminders of our finitude always lurk close by, like <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/">Ezekiel Emanuel's</a> article in last month's Atlantic, "Why I Hope to Die at 75." The head of the <a href="http://bioethics.nih.gov/about/">Clinical Bioethics Department</a> at the National Institutes of Health gives reasons for not living beyond 75: inevitable decline, disability, incapacity, and diminishment of "creativity, originality, and productivity." According to Emanuel, we wish to be remembered for our good years, prior to decline.</p>
<p style="line-height: 19.0400009155273px;"><span style="line-height: 19.0400009155273px;">There are grains of truth here. Many of us "die" well before we are officially declared dead. I've seen patients kept alive for far too long in permanent vegetative states, while family dynamics, emotions, finances and scarce medical resources are depleted. We pay a high price for medical "progress." I also know thriving, vibrant elderly, themselves significantly disabled and incapacitated.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 19.0400009155273px;"><strong style="line-height: 19.0400009155273px; color: #34405b; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">The Alden March Bioethics Institute offers a Master of Science in Bioethics, a Doctorate of Professional Studies in Bioethics, and Graduate Certificates in Clinical Ethics and Clinical Ethics Consultation. For more information on AMBI's online graduate programs, please visit our <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000099;" href="http://www.amc.edu/Academic/bioethics/index.cfm">website</a>.</strong></p>
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