ABSTRACT
Long skeptical of the role of language in the evaluation and treatment of patients, physicians over the last several decades have been encouraged to take patients’ speech more seriously and even to engage in “narrative medicine” (Charon). Dr. Joanne Gordon, in a recent piece in the Journal of Medical Ethics, puts speech act theory to work exploring the issue of verbal consent in a 2011 British legal ruling, W v M, that denied a family’s request to withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration from a minimally conscious family member (M) who had not given any formal advanced directive concerning end-of-life care. The family’s testimony relied on past statements from M that, they argued, indicated she would not wish to continue life in her condition. But to what extent, Gordon wonders, did M’s past statements describe her actual feelings about end-of-life care?
