People should take Terri Schiavo’s case as a cue to think more carefully about the end of their own lives and under what circumstances they would like to die, the Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., university president, told Ted Koppel on “Nightline” last Thursday.

“Nightline” invited Wildes to join political correspondent Cokie Roberts and television critic Hal Boedeker for a discussion on the aftermath of the Terri Schiavo controversy.

The discussion was designed to explore the range of consequence the incident has had.

While Roberts discussed the case’s political implications in Congress and Boedeker criticized the sensationalist coverage of the case on cable news, Wildes spoke about the impact this case has had and what impact it should have had on the way our society thinks about end-of-life medical treatment.

Wildes is an expert on bioethics. He has researched and taught on the subject at Loyola College in Maryland, University of Houston, Georgetown University Medical Center and Georgetown University as well as written a book on the subject, “Moral Acquaintances: Methodology in Bioethics.” Wildes had spoken on television before about the Schiavo case and other cases like it, and this was his fourth appearance on “Nightline.”

“One thing that I think we consistently underestimate is how much medical technology and the advances of medicine has changed the way we die in the United States,” said Wildes, estimating that 85 percent of people today have some element of choice in how much medical treatment they will accept when they are dying.

“We think that people simply die,” said Wildes, “but in fact, in most cases, death has become part of a decision making process.”

The central problem that allowed for a case like Schiavo’s to become so controversial, said Wildes, was that Americans do not normally discuss the end of their lives or how they would like to die.

“We don’t talk about death,” said Wildes, “and one of the things I think this case did was give people permission to have those conversations.”

Wildes said that more frequent use of advanced directives is the best way to prevent the problems that so publicly emerged in Mrs. Schiavo’s case as to what the preferred degree of treatment would be for the patient. Advanced directives are medical forms that make it clear to doctors what the wishes of a patient would be if they were to fall into a state in which they would not be able to make their own medical decisions. Wildes told Koppel that he hopes this incident will stir people to find and fill out advanced directive forms.

Wildes had turned down several invitations to appear on television, as the Schiavo case reached its peak of media coverage, he told The Maroon in an interview. Media treatment of the Schiavo story got progressively worse the longer it was in the public eye, said Wildes, and he had not wanted to get involved in what had deteriorated into an emotional feud. When “Nightline” approached him to speak after Schiavo’s death Wildes said, he agreed because he felt that at that point a rational discussion of the issues could resume.

Wildes said he had never seen a case of this kind gain such national recognition and can only hope that it encourages people to think more clearly about their own wishes for the end of their lives.

Kevin Corcoran can be reached at [email protected].