Category: Death Ethics

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Burial Death + Popular Culture Death + Technology Death Ethics Eco-Death

Prepare for Death and Follow Me…into Outer Space

Death In Space
Mary Roach, Boing Boing (September 02, 2010)

Wherever living humans go, the possibility of dead human bodies follows. It is the fullest expression of mortality’s inherent fragility.

So, when humans finally travel into space for extended periods of time without the luxury of a quickish return to Earth, dead body contingencies need to be thought through.This is especially true for any eventual trips to Mars, which may or may not involve establishing colonies.

Here’s the rub: NASA does not appear to have plans on what to do if an astronaut dies during a mission. Or the plans, if they exist, are not available to the public. I came across some news articles on this apparent planning gap, and it appears that NASA planners haven’t really taken seriously the possibility of an astronaut’s death during an extended voyage or what to do with a dead body during a mission.

This is not a minor point. Returning the dead body and its remnants to next of kin is standard procedure for US governmental operations; NASA space missions are no different. Yet during long or arduous expeditions dead bodies are often left behind, if for any reason, bringing the corpse back is too difficult and/or actually endangers fellow team members. Climbers who die on Mt. Everest are routinely left behind where they fall, not out of malice but out of necessity.

Enter into all of this, then, Mary Roach. Many of you will know Roach from her books Stiff, Spook, and Boink. She has also just written a new book entitled Packing for Mars, on exploring the red planet. Earlier this month, she wrote a short piece for Boing Boing about death in space and what might be done with a dead body. Oddly, Mary Roach’s work has popped up in a few different places the last few weeks.

Here is the lead from Mary Roach’s essay for Boing Boing:

The U.S. has plans for a manned visit to Mars by the mid-2030s. The ESA and Russia have sketched out a similar joint mission, and it is claimed that China’s space program has the same objective. Apart from their destination, all these plans share something in common: extraordinary danger for the explorers. What happens if someone dies out there, months away from Earth?

Roach discusses a plan developed by the Swedish environmentalist/burial innovator Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak and collaborator Peter Mäsak. Many readers of Stiff will remember Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak and her innovation called Promession. In a nutshell, the proposed system would reduce the dead body’s size and volume, thereby making it simpler to transport back to Earth. The full proposal (which is being developed with NASA) should be read to fully glean how this system would work.

What Wiigh-Mäsak and NASA are proposing is fine…but leaving the body in space would still be simpler. Indeed, the main reason to keep a body on hand after death would be for a postmortem examination to determine the Cause of Death and to see if the other astronauts were at risk for some previously unknown pathogen. That said, if an autopsy is not possible because of weaker gravitational pull and/or after a successful postmortem exam takes place, then the body is best given a respectful burial in space. I would rather see NASA develop plans for final disposition in space than a spaceship’s crew trying to make room for a dead colleague.

Besides, I have a hunch that any person who dies in space will probably want to stay in the ether.

Per usual, science fiction has already offered up one example of what a proper burial in outer space could resemble (see the vid at top).

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics

Update on Westboro Baptist Church Funeral Protests

Antigay Church can Protest Military Funerals, Judge Rules
Warren Richey, Christian Science Monitor (August 17, 2010)

Death Ref has been following the Westboro Baptists Church’s funeral protests since our start. In a nutshell, the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) protests outside funerals for veterans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The WBC claims (and has always claimed) that since America condones homosexuality God allows soldiers to die in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The logic is convoluted but the centerpiece of the WBC’s theology. As a result of these protests, which began in 2003 or so, many states passed laws which either banned funeral protests or ordered the WBC to stand at some distance away.

 

Last week, a federal judge decided that one of those laws (in Missouri) was unconstitutional, stating that it violated the protection of free speech. What I am waiting for is when the US Supreme Court hears a case about the WBC protests in October. It is really hard to tell what the politics of this case will do to the traditional liberal-conservative split. And it will be one of the few Supreme Court cases dealing with American funerals.

Per usual, Death Ref will keep everyone in the loop.

Categories
Death + the Law Death + the Web Death Ethics Monuments + Memorials

Dead Netizen

There’s been much talk of late about what happens to your online social connections, not to mention your email and all the other ways you exist virtually, after you die. With Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others there’s you and then there’s virtual you.

As more and more people join the virtual you ranks, the implementation of protocols and practices become necessary when the real you dies.

Yesterday, Twitter announced their new policy for deceased users. Prior to this, they had no policy in place.

In July, the NY Times published a story about what happens to your Facebook account after you die. Facebook’s policies, specifically the ability to “memorialize” someone’s Facebook page, have been in place since October, 2009.

But one size does not fit all as policies and practices vary greatly among the various email and social network providers, making it a confusing maze for those trying to navigate through it after a loved-one’s death. Various sites attempt to sort it all out. But, as technology changes and new social networking and email sites emerge, so too will protocols need to change. In writing this post, I ran across a socialmedialawstudent.com post discussing the legal ramifications of deceased users and their “digital property”. It seems future lawyers are trying to understand it too—perhaps all the better to eventually litigate it, I imagine.

Think about this: a typical scenario might be a person who has a Facebook, Twitter and Gmail account—and probably a work email too—although I imagine most family member’s are less concerned with work email and understand that companies and organizations have exclusive rights to their employee’s email accounts. Ultimately, however, your virtual fingerprints are everywhere. Gaining access after your death—should someone need or want to—can be potentially confusing and frustrating for everyone. And what if it goes completely against your last wishes? Do you want your family and possibly friends, noodling around in the remains of your virtual life?

All sort of websites have emerged to help you figure out these existential questions and more. Some of the sites, like 1000memories.com, are for the living to remember and memorialize the dead. Some sites, like legacylocker.com, are virtual vaults that keep usernames and passwords safe until you die and the info is then released to selected friends and family members. And still other sites, like mylastemail.com, allow you to craft out messages while you are still alive that will then only be released to friends and family upon your death.

Despite the best efforts of Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and others to address the post-mortem needs of their members and the people who survive them, it’s still an ungainly, swirling, complex mass of legal, moral and ethical issues. It seems progress is being made, but I think it will always be a messy business the more you and virtual you become intertwined and perhaps ultimately, indistinguishable.

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics

When Medical Treatment is Worse than Death

Letting Go
What should medicine do when it can’t save your life?
Atul Gawande, The New Yorker (August 2, 2010)

 

Dr. Atul Gawande: Make End Of Life More Humane
Terry Gross, Fresh Air on WHHY (July 29, 2010)

A few weeks ago, Dr. Atul Gawande wrote a good piece on End of Life decision making for both patients and doctors. Gawande is a staff writer for the New Yorker and a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He was also interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air about the same topic. Both the essay and interview are quite good and I would suggest that everyone (regardless of age) take some time to mull over when you no longer want medical treatment for a terminal condition.

This is an important question to think about since death is assured at the end of life.

But how you die and what quality of life you have during that process is a much broader question.

I would encourage everyone to spend at least one hour discussing these issues with next of kin. That’s more time spent discussing death than most people do in a lifetime.

Categories
Death + the Web Death Ethics

Legacy for Hire

A recent post by Idle Words blog caught my eye. It’s about the unscrupulous practices of Legacy.com, the back end machinery behind obituary notices in newspapers across the country, including, but not limited to, the venerable NY Times.

Idle Words did a little research (which Boing Boing then posted) to uncover exactly what’s going on with Legacy—because their mode of operation is less than transparent. At issue is how their online guest books work and the deceptive and manipulative way money changes hands in the process. The process is this: you sign the guest book after which you are greeted with a warning that states that the guest book will expire in a little over a month. You can make sure this doesn’t happen by paying $29 to keep it up for a year, or go for the eternity package and pay $79 to keep the guest book alive “in perpetuity.”

While that might seem a bit crass, that’s not really the issue. Through some investigation, Idle Words discovered that creating an online Legacy.com death notice is a less than forthright when it comes to the money. At no time in the process do they tell you what the charges are (from $79). For that, you need to drill down into the small print back at (in this case) the NY Times rate sheet page—outside of the confines of the obituary creation stage. I dare you to even find where the rate sheet info is because I can tell you it’s under deep cover—and I’m a librarian!

Says Idle Words:

[The] site takes money from bereaved people without disclosing what it’s billing them, gambling on the fact that they’re probably too preoccupied to care. Whether or not this kind of thing is legal, it is completely unethical. Even an undertaker who has upsold you on everything from coffin to funeral buffet has to show you a number before you sign on the dotted line.

I applaud Idle Words for looking into Legacy’s practices. Maybe this exposure will shame them into changing their “business model”.

Categories
Death + Art / Architecture Death + Crime Death Ethics

Charles Bowden on Juarez

Dreamland: The Way out of Juarez
On The Media (June 4, 2010)

Earlier this week I wrote about the drug-cartel murders in Juarez, Mexico, and mentioned Charles Bowden, a journalist who has been covering the situation for over a decade. He recently spoke with On The Media about a new book, Dreamland: The Way Out of Juarez, a mix of journalism and evocative, literary expression with haunting illustrations by Alice Leora Briggs.

They also discuss corruption in both the Mexican and U.S. governments for allowing the cartel to continue, along with criticism of the American press for poor coverage on the topic. Do have a listen — with his gravelly voice and poetic language, Bowden is a trip. A few quotes from the podcast:

“The city is dying. Violence isn’t an incident anymore, it’s the actual fabric of life, it’s part of basic transactions there.”

 

“Mexico is collapsing. This is an exodus of human beings. This is a far more significant event for the future of the United States than the war in Iraq.”

 

“I’ve been trying to leave the border for years, because it’s damaging to me. Because I’m tired of dead people. But I haven’t been able to make it. I actually am by some standards a normal person. I feed birds. I garden. I like to cook. I don’t need corpses. … The way I was raised, you can’t know this kind of slaughter is going on… and pretend it’s not happening.”

Categories
Death + Biology Death + Technology Death Ethics

The (Death) Singularity is Near

Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday
Ashlee Vance, The New York Times (June 13, 2010)
The Singularity movement sees a time when human beings and machines will merge and overcome illness and perhaps death.

The tagline for this New York Times article is only partially correct. The Singularity movement and another group called the Transhumanists see death as a curable disease. Not perhaps. Not maybe. Absolutely fixable.

It’s interesting to see this (long) article pop-up since the proponents of the Singularity have been making their case for at least a decade now. If not longer. In a nutshell, the ‘Singularity’ will be a moment when humans and computer technology seamlessly coalesce, creating a whole new species of human. The entire end result is part of evolution according to Ray Kurzweil, the featured Singularian in the article.

I hieee-spectrum-technological-singularity-thumbave been intrigued for some time by the arguments Kurzweil and others make, especially when it comes to lifespan. A number of Singularity believers talk about 700 year lifespans and/or the outright elimination of death. I don’t ever discount these ideas out of hand. It is truly impossible to predict where human biology will end up fifty or one hundred years from now. So, I actually think that eliminating death or greatly expanding lifespan might be possible.

The question to really ask is: why would anyone want to live 700 years?

Then you have the problem of age. If a person lives to be 700 years old, is their body also that old? The only way extended lifespan works is by either greatly reducing aging OR transplanting a person’s entire consciousness (including memories) into a younger body.

These futuristic scenarios are sometimes referred to as the Death of Death.

Humans are a long ways from accomplishing any of these biological makeovers but one thing is certain: a lot of people will die trying.

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics

Burying Dead Soldiers and Judging Free Speech

High Court: Justices to Consider ‘Funeral Protests’ in Free-Speech Case
Robert Barnes, Washington Post (May 31, 2010)

The Washington Post ran a really interesting article today on an upcoming US Supreme Court case involving freedom of speech and protests at funerals for dead soldiers. I expect that the story ran today because it is, afterall, Memorial Day and a good time to reflect on freedoms, liberties, and the people who died while in the US military. The Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether or not the Westboro Baptist Church, run by Fred Phelps, has a right to protest near soldiers’ funerals. What makes this case particularly complex is that the WBC protesters (which are never more than a handful) hold signs proclaiming their thanks for dead soldiers since God is punishing America for condoning homosexuality.

For years, the WBC has protested at all kinds of funerals under the “God Hates Fags” banner but it has really only been the soldiers’ funerals which drew the most ire. We’ve been covering this particular legal case on Death Ref and you can read those posts here: Father of Dead Soldier Ordered to Pay Up and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers”.

The case’s most provocative legal question is this: Will a majority of the US Supreme Court rule in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church, even though its tactics are almost universally despised? What are the limits of free speech in this situation? Can Albert Snyder (the father of dead Marine Matthew Snyder) sue the Westboro Baptist Church in order to stop its protest activities without violating the first Amendment to the US Constitution?

Robert Barnes, the reporter at the Washington Post explains:

…First Amendment specialists think Albert Snyder has a difficult case to prove to a court that has been particularly outspoken on government attempts to regulate speech and has accepted two privacy cases for the term that begins in the fall.

 

George Washington University law professor Daniel J. Solove, the author of “Understanding Privacy,” said he finds it “perplexing” that the justices took the case. The message of Phelps and his followers is “stupid and obnoxious,” Solove said, but seems to fit squarely into the kind of unpopular speech that the Constitution protects.

 

The church maintains that its protests are not aimed at the dead — there was no particular reason to select Matthew Snyder’s funeral for picketing — but at the actions of the living.

 

A sampling of the signs carried at Snyder’s 2006 funeral at St. John’s Catholic Church in Westminster, Md., included “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11,” “Semper Fi Fags,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “Priests Rape Boys.” The demonstrators abided by the law and stayed away from the funeral itself.

 

Albert Snyder sued Phelps, and Snyder argued at trial that the demonstration invaded his privacy, caused emotional distress and violated his rights to free exercise of religion and peaceful assembly. He said a treatise posted on the church’s Web site specifically mentioned Matthew and his family.

 

A jury awarded Snyder more than $10 million, which was cut in half by the judge and then overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond. A three-judge panel said that although Phelps’s rhetoric was offensive, it was protected as speech concerning issues in the national debate.

The politics of this case are also compelling. A number of both conservative and liberal elected officials have joined together in support of the military families while simultaneously passing laws in about 40 US states banning (or severely curtailing) protests by the WBC. On the one hand, this is not particularly shocking. On the other hand, social conservatives do not necessarily disagree with the WBC’s anti-gay rhetoric and liberals have historically made the case for unpopular, protest speech.

And no matter where the WBC protests, the counter protests are usually much larger. Indeed, a Veterans motorcycle group called the Patriot Guard Riders attends soldiers’ funerals (but only if invited by the family) so that the next of kin is insulated from the protests. In the middle of all this is a funeral director trying to negotiate this moment in American cultural politics but then that’s nothing new.

So the questions remains open: What are the limits of free speech in this situation?

I think that it is also inevitable that this case will end up in the election politics of the autumn, which is too bad because the questions being raised are really important and not easily decided.

Sadly, it is the soldiers’ families who get caught up in the middle of this and at the end of the day I have a feeling that the impact on next of kin at the funerals will carry a great of weight with the Supreme Court.

As the Washington Post puts it:

Snyder said he was only vaguely aware of the protests at military funerals until the protest came to him. He still gets emotional recalling that day.

“All we wanted was a private funeral for my son,” he said. “They turned it into a three-ring circus.”

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics

Minnesota’s Extra End-of-Life Legal Hoops for Same-Sex Partners

Editorial: ‘Final Wishes’ Veto is Cold, Calculating
At time of death, we can be kinder to same-sex couples.
Star Tribune (May 24, 2010)

Last week, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty vetoed a bill that would have given same-sex partners in long term relationships the legal right to the other partner’s dead body for funeral arrangements and final disposition of the remains. I wrote about the veto on Death Ref (Governor of MN to Gays and Lesbians: You Cannot Claim Your Partner’s Corpse) and discussed how Pawlenty’s decision was very similar to a veto issued by the Governor of Rhode Island.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has now weighed in on the veto with an Editorial. I totally agree with what the Editorial Board says and with its critique of Pawlenty’s rationale for vetoing the bill.

Here is the Editorial’s key section:

“Currently a person can, by executing a will, designate who shall be empowered to control final disposition of his or her remains,” Pawlenty wrote in his letter explaining his veto. “This bill therefore addresses a nonexistent problem.”

 

That’s not the reality, say some who have lived through the death of a partner, only to face technical entanglements that kept them from carrying out their final wishes.

 

“We had done what we thought was everything we could possibly do,” said Tim Reardon of Golden Valley, recalling the legal preparations he and his partner Eric Mann made before Mann’s death in 2006. “The myth is that you can legally take care of all that stuff.”

 

Reardon’s inability to carry out Mann’s wishes, until his partner’s understanding parents intervened, is an example of why the bill is needed. “To have to hear, after your partner is dead and you’re absolutely physically and emotionally spent, somebody say, ‘I’m sorry, your relationship is not recognized,’ it strikes this deep kind of disbelief. It’s just such a crazy violation of our rights, our dignity, of our respect.”

 

It’s heartless to put our fellow citizens through such heartache. And it’s unfair to make same-sex couples hire attorneys to get the same rights as married couples.

Governor Pawlenty’s veto is part of a larger battle that will lose the war. Marriage and all its benefits, including the right to a deceased, same-sex partner’s corpse, is on the horizon.

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics Suicide

Doctors Should Talk with Patients about Death

Doctors Should Talk To Patients About How They Want To Die, Says Regulator
James Meikle, The Guardian (May 20 2010)

The last month’s worth of news coverage in the UK has focused on nothing but the May elections so it was good to see an old fashioned death and dying story in the Guardian. My first take on these new guidelines, that doctors should speak with dying patients about, um, dying, was a smirk.

I do know, however, that frank and candid conversations about dying are not everyone’s forte, so I appreciate what the UK’s General Medical Council has done. As the Guardian reports,

While the guidance does not address assisted suicide, the GMC says it is still illegal and doctors have to remain within the law. However, it says there is “no absolute obligation to prolong life irrespective of the consequences for the patient, and irrespective of the patient’s views.”

This has been causing some real gnashing of teeth today. And it should. While it is absolutely true that the prolongation of life is never absolute, it’s still something which most doctors will do. Enter, then, patients and their end-of-life wishes. At a certain point during medical treatment, a patient may very well say “I’ve had enough and I want to stop all this.” Patients also expect (as well they should) that doctors will continue to treat them without giving up. The whole situation, then, can be a real bind for doctors and patients alike.

What these new guidelines want to do, it seems, is say to UK doctors that it’s ok when patients die, assuming the patient has a terminal condition and that the patient has accepted death. Negotiating the end of life is a complex task, especially when it comes to medical care, so I think that what the GMC has done is a good thing.

Here is a stripped down list of what the new guidelines entail:

• Doctors must give patients approaching the end of life the same quality of care as all other patients.

• Decisions must start from a presumption in favour of prolonging life.

• Doctors may recommend particular treatment options they believe best for patients, but must not pressurise them to accept advice.

• Patients who feel under pressure from families or carers to accept or refuse treatments must be helped to reach their own decisions.

• Doctors must not base treatment decisions involving significant risk to patients solely on constraints of money, staff or equipment.

• Doctors must respect “as far as possible” wishes of patients who do not want to know in detail about their condition or treatment.

• Doctors can withdraw from providing care if religious, moral or other personal beliefs amount to a conscientious objection to a patient’s decision to refuse treatment.

Paula-Westoby-DNR-TattooThe new guidelines also reminded me, for some odd reason, of a funny and poignant story from late 2008. A 79 year old New Zealand woman, Paula Westoby, had Do Not Resuscitate tattooed on her chest. She did this so that in the event she unexpectedly died, her wishes would be known.

This is what I call a real commitment to the End of Life.

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics

Governor of MN to Gays and Lesbians: You Cannot Claim Your Partner’s Corpse

Pawlenty Vows Veto of Same-Sex Measure
Jason Hoppin, Pioneer Press (May 13, 2010)

Oh Tim Pawlenty, Governor of Minnesota. I know that you think you’ve got a chance at the 2012 Republican Presidential ticket but, alas, you’ll be disappointed. In all honesty, I don’t know who will be the GOP candidate but it won’t be you, that much I know. So instead of helping gay and lesbian Minnesotans in committed, long term relationships cope with a partner’s death you go ahead and veto a completely practical, sensible bill.

I am referring here to Minnesota Senate Bill No. 341 which, among other things, would allow same-sex domestic partners to claim their dead partner’s body in order to make funeral arrangements. Here is the bill’s language:

Subd. 2. Determination of right to control and duty of disposition.
(a) The right to control the disposition of the remains of a deceased person, including the location and conditions of final disposition, unless other directions have been given by the decedent pursuant to subdivision 1, vests in, and the duty of final disposition of the body devolves upon, the following in the order of priority listed:

The list includes 1.) Wills and Legal Instruments 2.) Spouses 3.) Domestic Partners and other groups such as children. It is the third group, domestic partners, which Bill 341 added and it is the reason Governor Pawlenty (by his own admission) vetoed it. Pawlenty’s rationale was that since same-sex couples can establish Wills or Health Directives in which a same-sex partner is named as the sole decision maker then the law was unnecessary.

In a sense Governor Pawlenty is correct but only so far as this means same-sex couples have to jump through a hoop that married straight couples do not. Furthermore, this law would have made the entire funeral arrangement process and final disposition of the dead body a lot simpler. As the law currently stands in Minnesota, any same-sex couple without explicit legal documents stating the couples’ final disposition wishes faces a potential legal challenge from next of kin. If the family of a gay man or lesbian woman does not like or even acknowledge the same-sex partner then that person can be legally excluded from the entire funeral.

This is a situation that funeral directors confronted quite a bit during the 1980s and 1990s, during the height of the AIDS epidemic. It’s a terrible scenario in which the body in the casket can literally become a dividing line. The Minnesota Senate Bill would have gone a long way towards simplifying how same-sex couples can claim their deceased partner’s body.

One day, and it will be in my own lifetime, these legal forms of discrimination and the individuals who supported them will look absolutely barbaric. This much I also know.

So there you go Governor Pawlenty. You’re not going to get the GOP nomination and you’re acting like a completely intolerant, insensitive brute. But at least you’re in good company: the Governor of Rhode Island did the same exact thing last November and he too will never be President of the United States of America.

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics

Rationing End-of-Life Care Debate

Debating the Ethics of Rationing End-of-Life Care
The NewsHour (April 26, 2010)

The NewsHour on PBS ran a short piece on a recent end-of-life care debate at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. A video from the debate, which was much longer and must be available somewhere on the interweb, is embedded below.

Susan Dentzer, editor-in-chief of Health Affairs and NewsHour commentator moderated.

Here are the panel members:

Ira Byock, a doctor and director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH
Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania
Ken Connor, chair of the Center for a Just Society and a lawyer in private practice
Marie Hilliard, director of bioethics and public policy at the National Catholic Bioethics Center and a registered nurse