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Time plays an important role in medical decisions at different stages of life. The German Research Foundation is funding research into these relationships for another four years. The new spokesperson is Mark Schweda from the University of Oldenburg.
Life-shortening illnesses, the unfulfilled desire to have children in the face of impending menopause or an individual’s age: at different stages of their lives people focus on different aspects of time, and awareness of time passing influences whether and how they evaluate and utilise available medical options. This is one of the findings of the research group "Medicine and the Temporal Structure of the Good Life", which has been exploring interactions between medicine and lifespan from various scientific perspectives since 2021. With renewed funding from the German Research Foundation, the group will now be able to continue its work for another four years and also introduce a new research approach. Mark Schweda, Professor of Ethics in Medicine and Healthcare at the University of Oldenburg, will take over the role of research group spokesperson from his Göttingen colleague Professor Claudia Wiesemann. The group applied for almost 3.4 million euros in funding.
"With its promises of health, well-being and even the fulfillment of the desire to have children, medicine is always interconnected with notions of a good, successful life," says Schweda. "A better understanding of the importance of time, life phases and transitions within this context will help practitioners and patients alike to make good decisions on medical issues."
In the first funding phase, researchers from the fields of philosophy, medical ethics, medicine, literature and media studies as well as sociology and social psychology took a closer look at three groups which will continue to be their focus: young adults with chronic heart disease, the middle-aged in the context of reproductive medicine, and older people and their healthcare. The researchers have gathered and analysed vast amounts of data and developed new theoretical concepts. One situation they focused on was that of young adults with congenital heart disease whose life expectancy has significantly increased thanks to medical advances and who, as a result, suddenly have to deal with issues such as working and starting a family. Middle-aged people also grapple with issues related to starting a family – in some cases for much longer than was the case a few years ago, given the advent of new methods in reproductive medicine. At a more advanced age, questions regarding sensible goals and the limitations of medical treatment tend to come to the fore.
"The temporal structure of human life is constantly being challenged by medical advances," Schweda explains. The interdisciplinary team, which brings together researchers from the Universities of Oldenburg, the University of Göttingen, the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, has discovered that life’s time structure plays a more central role in medicine and healthcare than previously assumed. "Perceptions of the different phases of life have a decisive influence on whether, for example, people of an advanced age undergo complex medical interventions or accept physical impairments," says Schweda.
A recurring motif observed by the scientists is generativity. This refers to the awareness that one's own life is at the same time part of a larger temporal framework in which earlier generations preceded you and new generations will succeed you. "The desire to pass something on to future generations or to make room for them can for example make a certain medical decision seem the most sensible in old age, as opposed to the idea that everything simply ends when your own life ends," explains Schweda. Whether someone wants or has children can also play an important role in medical decisions, for instance in cases where pregnancy is associated with high risks due to chronic illness. The relevance of such generational aspects for medicine will therefore take centre stage in the upcoming funding period.
The overall objective of the team’s work is to document and analyse the broadest possible spectrum of perspectives and values on the subject of medicine and lifetime. This includes, for example, the evaluation of media representations in medical drama series, in order to examine their influence on what people consider to be a good life in time. One novel aspect will be the refinement of methods that improve the documentation of temporal aspects of quality of life in medicine. Another focus is the role of social commitment to health in old age. In a separate sub-project, Schweda is examining how finiteness and generativity affect the way older people deal with medical options. "Intergenerational issues are already an important topic for us as a society in many areas, for example, pensions, national debt and climate change. It's high time we tackled this topic in medicine and healthcare too," stresses the medical ethicist.
Prof. Dr. Mark Schweda, E-Mail: mark.schweda@uol.de, Tel.: 0411/798-4483
Medical ethicist Mark Schweda from the University of Oldenburg is the new spokesperson of the resear ...
Deutscher Ethikrat /Christian Thiel
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Medical ethicist Mark Schweda from the University of Oldenburg is the new spokesperson of the resear ...
Deutscher Ethikrat /Christian Thiel
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