Dr. Stephen Post is Professor and Associate Director for Educational Programs, Center for Biomedical Ethics, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Post also serves as a Senior Research Scholar in the Becket Institute at St. Hugh's College, Oxford University.

Dr. Post received his Ph.D. in religious ethics and moral philosophy from the University of Chicago, The Divinity School (1983), where he was an elected university fellow and a research fellow in the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion. He has served as Chair of the American Academy of Religion's Section in Religion and Ethics in Healthcare, as a Senior Research Fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, and is an elected Senior Fellow of the Hastings Center.

In 1995, Post completed his work as Associate Editor of the 5-volume Encyclopedia of Bioethics (Macmillan Press). His 4-volume illustrated reference work, Bioethics for Students (Macmillan Press) was published in 1999. He is the author of The Moral Challenge of Alzheimer Disease: Ethical Issues from Diagnosis to Dying (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, revised edition) described in its first edition as "an outstanding, potentially classic book" in Health Affairs. He is currently ethics editor for the journal Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders, and Ethics Editor for the 4-volume Encyclopedia of Aging (Macmillan).

Dr. Post is a member of the Medical and Scientific Advisory Panel of Alzheimer's Disease International. He serves on the National Ethics Advisory Board for the U.S.
 

Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association, and was a member of the Alzheimer's Society of Canada National Ethics Task Force. In 1998 Dr. Post was awarded a distinguished service recognition by the association's national board. He received the Langston Service Award for his contribution to the lives of family caregivers in Greater Cleveland. Post is also a member of the ethics committee of the American Geriatrics Society.

 Lecture One                                  

DEEP FORGETFULNESS: AM I REALLY MY PARENT’S KEEPER?

In our aging society,  the principle “Honor thy father and thy mother,” the first precept of the Decalogue dealing with human relationships, has become more difficult to live by.   This lecture examines the Christian concept of filial duty, the notion of intergenerational justice, efforts by anti-aging researchers to achieve radical life-extension, and the problematic of  senicide.  Above all, the stark reality of progressive irreversible dementias, such as Alzheimer disease, and their impact on informal family caregivers, will be closely examined.  What does Christian theology bring to the lives of the most deeply forgetful and their caregivers?

 Lecture Two

 COVENANT  MARRIAGE AND CARING FOR THE WEAK

The deep vow of marriage, “until death do us part,” exists as a radical alternative (especially in an aging society) to the notion of a marriage that lasts only so long as each party feels entirely happy and healthy.  I will indicate that marriage is above all an institution for providing sustained care to those imperiled by severe, chronic, and terminal illnesses.  The ideal of lasting marital unions brings with it an inevitable demand for sometimes painful and often exhausting commitment to the other that must surround and limit the potentially solipsistic expectation for “my” health.  Attention will be given to Christian families caring for persons with retardation and dementia.

Lecture Three

HOW AGAPE LOVE PRESERVES THE PERSONHOOD OF THE DEEPLY  FORGETFUL AND ALLOWS FOR QUALITY OF LIVES

Agape love is the deep generous affective affirmation of the person that was forever  perfectly revealed in the ministry of Jesus, especially to the weak of mind on the margins of society who today threaten our “hypercognitive” images of “personhood” and of worth.  Agape is to person as care (cura) is to person-in-need.  While the body of the person with dementia will often remain strong for a number of years, mental capacities as well as the accumulated competencies and memories of a lifetime painfully slip away.   How can Christians preserve the personhood of such individuals, with attention to emotional, relational, and spiritual well-being?  How can Christians transform the culture so that the cognitively imperiled can be treated with respect?

Friday  1:30 - 4:30  PM “CREATING A CULTURE OF CARE,” Cordula Dick-Muehlke, Ph.D.

Our cultural bias against the most deeply forgetful penetrates psychology and the other helping professions, the way individuals with dementia view themselves, and how families experience the challenge of caregiving.  The challenge for each of these groups – helpers, persons with dementia, and families – is the radical shift in perception Stephen Post proposes and, consequently, in action.  How does one make the shift from viewing the individual with dementia as half full rather than half empty?  What are the implications of this corrected view for our actions, that is, for care?