Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics Suicide

Choosing Death for Pets. Choosing Death for Humans.

Weighing the End of Life
Louise Aronson, New York Times (February 3, 2013)
How can we measure the quality of life, for our beloved pets or for older, infirm people?

The Old Gray Lady (also known as the New York Times) has been on quite a death-dying-end-of-life-dead body streak of late. In today’s Times, gerontologist Dr. Louise Aronson writes about determining when to put her elderly dog “to sleep” and how that decision-making process gave her pause when thinking about her own human patients.

I am frequently asked about the pet-human relation when it comes to choosing death. So, for example, if a family can choose to humanely end a pet’s life, then why can’t that same family go along with a loved one’s decision to die? The distinction(s) between non-human animals (particularly pets) and human beings are fairly well entrenched in the twenty-first century first world, so I do not see that changing soon.

That said, given the human impulse to make sure that pets do not suffer at the end of life and that a pet’s death is ‘a good death,’ the same philosophical, ethical, moral (dare I say), and practical principles will also be applied to human beings.

The application of these principles and questions will persist. How the law and the modern nation–state decides to view a citizen’s choice to die is a different story altogether.

Categories
Death + Biology Death + the Law Death Ethics Suicide

Radiolab short on Medical Doctors and their End-of-Life Choices

The Bitter End
Radiolab short (January 15, 2013)
We turn to doctors to save our lives — to heal us, repair us, and keep us healthy. But when it comes to the critical question of what to do when death is at hand, there seems to be a gap between what we want doctors to do for us, and what doctors want done for themselves.

This past week, the WNYC’s Radiolab ran a really good short on death, dying, and end-of-life choices. The show, The Bitter End, focused on the fascinating Johns Hopkins Precursors Study which asks Medical Doctors the following:

What are your preferences “…for treatment given a scenario of irreversible brain injury without terminal illness.”

The study has found time and time again that Medical Doctors do not want most (if any) medical treatments that would prolong their lives in this given situation. This finding stands in contrast to members of the general public who generally do want aggressive, life-prolonging treatments. The Radiolab reporters do a good job discussing these medical options with all kinds of people. You should also read the Radiolab blog post, which covers the Precursors Study.

The show flagged up, once again, an issue that the Death Reference Desk has been asking readers since it started: How much and what kind of end-of-life care you want?

This is a question, as most people can see, that only individuals can answer themselves and we here at Death Ref would encourage everyone to have this conversation with their next-of-kin. The Radiolab story captures precisely this kind of conversation between host Jad Abumrad and his Medical Doctor father.

The radio short also mentions, albeit briefly, a form of Do Not Resuscitate tattoo. Regular Death Ref readers will of course remember the recent run of DNR tattoo posts: Do Not Resuscitate this Tattoo or the Person Attached to It and Do Not Resuscitate Tattoos Cannot be Stopped.

Coincidentally, the New York Times ran a blog post today entitled When the Patient Knows Best and it covers many of the points in the Radiolab story.

Many thanks to Radiolab for putting the programme together.

Categories
Death Ethics Suicide

Will Self on the Right to Die

Terminal Thoughts
Will Self, BBC Radio 4 (January 11, 2013)

UK Writer Will Self put together a very good BBC Radio essay on suicide and choosing to die. You can also find Self’s writings on end-of-life issues on his blog.

The radio essay is about 10 minutes long. It’s good. Give it a listen.

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics Suicide

The Right to Die in 2013

A Life Worth Ending
The era of medical miracles has created a new phase of aging, as far from living as it is from dying. A son’s plea to let his mother go.
Michael Wolff, New York Magazine (May 20, 2012)

 

The Suicide Plan
Frontline, WGBH Boston (November 2012)

If there is anything that the Death Reference Desk can safely predict for 2013, it is this: right to die and assisted dying cases will continue to both happen and capture public attention.

I was catching up on some 2012 reading during the holidays and finally read Michael Wolff’s article in New York Magazine about watching his mother die. It is an exceptionally well written piece and it truly captures the following biomedical paradox: preventing death at every turn often makes living unbearable– for both the individual and next-of-kin.

One of Wolff’s key points is that the current generation of aging adults watching their elderly parents decline will most certainly impact how these same aging adults want to die. He is absolutely correct, and I do not foresee that situation lessening to any degree.

It was after I read Wolff’s article that I finally got a chance to watch the Frontline documentary, The Suicide Plan. I never intended these back-to-back end-of-life activities but they absolutely complemented each other.

The Frontline documentary is worth watching, if for any reason, it is a sign of what is to come regarding individuals who want to end their lives because of terminal illness. Death Ref has covered these kinds of cases before and will continue to do so into the future. The key issue is less about the actual suicide and more about if another person assists in the death. What exactly constitutes “assisting” or “to assist” takes on all kinds of meanings. Frontline examines a number of assisted dying cases in just this way.

Both Wolff’s article and The Suicide Plan share an important argument: forcing terminally ill individuals to live when they want to die, requires both collective, national debates (i.e., as part of health care laws) and individual, personal conversations so that next-of-kin know (and can document) what kind of death a person wants.

Writing about these end-of-life items reminded me of Tony Nicklinson’s right to die case in the UK. Two good articles on Nicklinson here and here.

Death cannot ultimately be stopped. That’s the central dilemma confronted by both Frontline and Wolff (and the modern West writ large). Different kinds of researchers are certainly looking for a method to delay the aging process and dying by extension but those medical innovations (if actually desirable) are longer term possibilities.

Until that future arrives, many people will continue to choose death.

Watch The Suicide Plan on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Categories
Death + Humor Death + Popular Culture

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the Death Reference Desk

Merry Christmas to all of our lovely Death Reference Desk Readers.

And remember to keep it Goth this holiday season. Ho ho ho.

Categories
Death + Crime Death + Technology Death + the Law Grief + Mourning Suicide

Reflections on Mass Shootings in America

Packing Protection or Packing Suicide Risk?
Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post (July 07, 2008)

 

Anatomy of a Murder-Suicide
Andrew Solomon, New York Times (December 22, 2012)

Where to begin? I’ve been asking myself this question all week as I watched the Newtown, CT, news coverage. The Death Reference Desk hasn’t really covered other mass shootings, and, in fact, our posts directly related to guns number two. The first story involved a funeral director trying to stop gun violence with a billboard. The second post, something I wrote, discussed a new company offering to fill gun ammunition with a person’s created remains. I was surprised, actually, that Meg, Kim, and I hadn’t written about guns and death more often, but so it goes.

The entire Newtown shooting reminded me, yet again, of a 2008 Washington Post article by Shankar Vedantam regarding the correlation between liberalized gun laws and increases in successful suicides by gunshot. Vendatam’s article (posted above) does an excellent job explaining this phenomena and how it has been tracked for several years.

But I couldn’t quite bring everything together: increasingly loose gun laws, mass shootings, and individual suicides. Then today, Sunday, Andrew Solomon penned a salient and cogent op/ed for the New York Times. His entire article is worth reading but it was this section towards the end that caught my eye:

The United States is the only country in the world where the primary means of suicide is guns. In 2010, 19,392 Americans killed themselves with guns. That’s twice the number of people murdered by guns that year. Historically, the states with the weakest gun-control laws have had substantially higher suicide rates than those with the strongest laws. Someone who has to look for a gun often has time to think better of using it, while someone who can grab one in a moment of passion does not.

 

We need to offer children better mental health screenings and to understand that mental health service works best not on a vaccine model, in which a single dramatic intervention eliminates a problem forever, but on a dental model, in which constant care is required to prevent decay. Only by understanding why Adam Lanza wished to die can we understand why he killed. We would be well advised to look past the evil against others that most horrifies us and focus on the pathos that engendered it.

It is worth noting that Andrew Solomon recently wrote a book called Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity that examines children (and young adults) who commit violent acts. You can listen to him discuss the book here.

Yet, these thoughts on the Newtown murders and Adam Lanza’s own suicide (after killing 20 children and 6 adults) still feel incomplete since human language seems inadequate given the event’s severity. For me, the most compelling stories emerged in unlikely places. With the Honan Funeral Home in Newtown, for example, the only funeral home in the town and where most of the funerals took place. And in a series of articles in Slate that took different angles on the school shooting and gun violence in America:

Since 1980, 302 People Have Been Killed in School Shootings: An interactive chart of every school shooting and its death toll

 

In the Wake of the Newtown Shooting, Should We Fear a Wave of Copycat Crimes?: “We Still Look at Ourselves as Survivors”: More Than Eighty Years Later, Remembering the Deadliest School Massacre in American History

 

We Have the Technology To Make Safer Guns: Too bad gunmakers don’t care

I have no idea what kinds of gun law changes the Newtown shootings might produce. It’s hard to say, and if previous mass shootings are any guide, not much will happen.

That said, I’m hopeful that the relationship between suicide and guns is given significantly more attention and care. I’m also hopeful that the Death Reference Desk doesn’t end up running a whole series of gun death posts– but the odds don’t look good at this very moment.

 

Gun Show photo by M Glasgow on Flickr

Categories
Death + Humor Death + Popular Culture Death + the Web

Dumb Ways to Die…the Public Service Announcement

Dumb Ways to Die
by John Mescall for Metro Trains Melbourne (2012)

 

Dumb Ways to Die: Australian rail company’s public safety warning video
The Guardian (November 29, 2012)

There are many reasons to admire Australians, especially their collective love for all things dark, sinister, and macabre.

But always with a smile. And maybe a Foster’s. Possibly a wombat.

So the Dumb Ways to Die song and video by John Mescall for Metro Trains Melbourne comes as little surprise:

The animated ditty is also something of an internet phenomena, and the Death Reference Desk has been following its rapid ascent.

Watch Mescall explain the idea for Dumb Ways to Die:

You can also watch the song with the lyrics underneath (not available in all countries):

Hat tip to Charles Darwin.

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics

New York Times Editorial on End of Life Care

Care at the End of Life
The New York Times (November 24, 2012)

Really good editorial in today’s New York Times on end-of-life decision making. The editorial sums up the issues and makes a clear and cogent case as to why advanced planning directives make sense.

Here’s to hoping the changes to American health insurance coverage eventually cover end-of-life discussions between patients and doctors.

Go go Gray Lady!

 

Photo by Chalmers Butterfield

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics

Assisted Dying Law on the Ballot in Massachusetts come Tuesday

Over My Dead Body: Helping the Terminally Ill to Die, Once Taboo, is Gaining Acceptance
The Economist (October 20th, 2012)

 

Assisted Suicide Goes To Vote In Massachusetts
Sacha Pfeiffer, National Public Radio (October 25, 2012)

A quick pre-election 2012 Death Reference Desk style(!) post about a proposed Assisted Dying law in Massachusetts (state motto: By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty.)

Should a terminally ill patient with less than six months to live have the right to a doctor’s assistance with committing suicide? Massachusetts voters will decide on Tuesday. If so, Massachusetts will become the third state to do so after Oregon and Washington.

The proposed Massachusetts law is very similar to Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, which is widely regarded as a model assisted dying law.

The National Public Radio print article and radio piece are quite good on giving the backstory to the Massachusetts vote.

The New York Times ran an op-ed by writer Ben Mattlin last week that presents Mattlin’s concerns about the ballot vote: Suicide by Choice? Not So Fast.

Not much else to say, other than we at the Death Reference Desk will keep an eye on Tuesday’s vote and report any developments.

Categories
Grief + Mourning Monuments + Memorials

Repost: Juanita Garciagodoy (March 10, 1952 – October 27, 2011)

In honor of the one year anniversary of Juanita’s death, I’m again sharing the memorial post I wrote for her. If you missed it last time, please take a look.

Categories
Cemeteries Death + Technology Death + the Web Eco-Death

Future Death. Future Dead Bodies. Future Cemeteries. TEDx Talk by John Troyer

Future Death. Future Dead Bodies. Future Cemeteries
John Troyer, TEDxBristol Talk (September 15, 2012)

On September 15, 2012 I was one of the TEDxBristol speakers. The TEDxBristol 2012 theme was Future Shock, so I took the opportunity to discuss three of my favorite topics: Future Death, Future Dead Bodies, and Future Cemeteries.

The entire TEDx event was organized exceptionally well, and I was impressed by all the speakers. I usually count on at least one speaker who completely blows it and becomes that guy (because it’s almost always one of the male speakers) so that I can be relieved that I wasn’t that guy. But no.

John Troyer using officially recognizable TED talk hand gestures

John Troyer using officially recognizable TED talk hand gestures

What really stands out for me from the day is the live drawing being done by artist Nat Al-Tahhan as each of us spoke. Nat drew images reflecting our talks, while we spoke, and she nailed the day down. I love the images. You can see them here.

I’m fairly certain that Death Ref readers can determine when I spoke, based only on the drawings.

The video of my talk is now up and you can watch it on YouTube here or above.

Categories
Death + the Law Death Ethics Grief + Mourning

When People Choose to Die

When Prolonging Death Seems Worse Than Death
Fresh Air with Terry Gross, NPR (October 09, 2012)
Many of us think of death as the worst possible outcome for a terminally ill patient, but Judith Schwarz disagrees.

Fresh Air’s Terry Gross ran a really fantastic interview this week with Judith Schwarz from Compassion & Choices. I can go on and on about why people should organize their End-of-Life directives and wishes, but Judith Schwarz spells it out from A-Z during the interview.

I strongly suggest listening to the full interview.