The Dalhousie School of Public Administration is pleased to announce and invite you to attend the second lecture in the Segelberg Lecture Series.

This lecture titled “The Ends of Life and Death: Public Policy, Spirituality and the Law” will be given by Dr. Jocelyn Downie, author of Dying Justice, and former Director of the Health Law Institute and professor at the Dalhousie University Law School. Dr Downie will explore legal, public policy and spiritual issues at the end of life focused upon rights to die. It will be held Thursday, October 26 at 5 pm in the Potter Auditorium at 6100 University Avenue.

In the interest of informing the discussion we have invited a panel to bring different perspectives to Dr. Downie’s remarks. Senator Sharon Carstairs, former Minister with Special Responsibility for Palliative Care in the federal Government and Leader of the Opposition in Manitoba Legislature, will comment from the perspective of public policy. Dr. Paul MacIntyre, Division Head of Palliative Medicine for the QEII Health Sciences Centre, will bring a medical and palliative care perspective. Dr. Marilyn Walker, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Mount Allison University, will comment on social and spiritual approaches to death and dying across cultures. The audience will be invited to comment and raise questions for Dr. Downie and the commentators.

The third lecture, taking place on Jan 29th, 2007, will focus on spiritual issues with the ends of life and will be delivered by Dr. Karen Lebacqz.  Dr. Lebacqz has taught at the Pacific School of Religion and recently was a Bioethicist-in-Residence at Yale.  Again, there will be commentators from the three other aspects of the debate including public policy, the law and medicine. The Medical lecture will occur in the fall of 2007 and the Public Policy Lecture in the winter of 2008.

We look forward to seeing you for our second lecture with Jocelyn Downie.  For more information on the lecture and the Segelberg Lecture Series, please visit www.segelberglectures.com or contact the School of Public Administration at 494 3742.

This lecture series, made possible by a gift from the Segelberg Trust, is intended to foster and expand a public conversation on spirituality, public policy, and end of life issues. Many of you enjoyed the first lecture given by Terry Waite in February 2006. We welcome you to the second lecture.

Introductory information on the Oct 26,  2006 lecture:

The Ends of Life and Death: Public Policy, Spirituality, and the Law

Euthanasia and assisted suicide – few words take us more immediately to the intersection of law and spirituality.

Beliefs about the meaning of life and suffering.  Beliefs about the definition and determination of death.   Beliefs about the significance and legitimacy of agency in relation to the timing and cause of death.  All of these beliefs motivate positions on what the law should be.  Not surprisingly, however, they do not take us to a single position on which all can agree.  Indeed, polarized positions are frequently justified through reference to various competing conceptions of human spirituality.

In this lecture, I will first describe the current legal status of various end of life practices in Canada including the determination of death, the withholding and withdrawal of potentially life-sustaining treatment, the provision of potentially life-shortening palliative treatment, assisted suicide, and euthanasia.  I will then explore the ways in which spirituality has played, might play, and should play a role in debates about what the legal status of these practices should be.