Early Registration Extended to October 20

The Legacy of Nancy Cruzan: 20 years later are we any better at healthcare?

November 12 – 13, 2010
Kansas City, MO

REGISTER NOW: www.cruzan.bioethics.net

Early registration for this conference has been extended to October 20. In addition, all registrants receive autographed copy of Long Goodbye: The Deaths of Nancy Cruzan by William Colby, lawyer for the family of Nancy Cruzan.

This conference features a session entitled, “What Can we Learn from Cruzan? Crafting Social Policy for a Pluralistic Society?” with the following panelists:

Introduction -- Christian Sinclair, MD– International Leader in electronic media discussion of palliative care, Section Editor of Pallimed, and Associate Medical Director of Kansas City Hospice

Richard Payne, MD -- Director of the Institute for End of Life Care at Duke University. Dr. Payne is a board certified neuro-oncologist and national leader in palliative care.

Cynda Hylton Rushton, PhD, RN -- Associate Professor, Nursing and Pediatrics Faculty and Program Director of the Harriett Lane Compassionate Care program and faculty of the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University.

To register NOW click here.

Commemorating Nancy Cruzan

Rosemary Flanigan

March 9, 2010

2010 is the 20th anniversary of Nancy Cruzan's death and of the passage of the Patient Self-Determination Act. At the Center for Practical Bioethics we are thinking about how best to commemorate the two events.

Certainly we don’t honor Nancy’s death—there was nothing “honorable” about it, nor the circumstances of the years leading up to it and the tragic effects of those years on both Joe and Joyce Cruzan (Joe’s suicide and Joyce’s cancer—don’t tell me that stress doesn’t play a part in causing cancer—or tell me, if you think I’m wrong!)

But Cruzan led to the PSDA and that led to a nation’s trying to take some control over dying—and even to the emergence of palliative care. (O.K., hospice and palliative care would have emerged with or without Cruzan, but I see an “influence” of Cruzan there.)

But how best to commemorate the 20th anniversary? So I thought I’d ask you: What does Nancy Cruzan mean to you?