Author: Giza Lopes Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 376
Book Description
Providing a thorough, well-researched investigation of the socio-legal issues surrounding medically assisted death for the past century, this book traces the origins of the controversy and discusses the future of policymaking in this arena domestically and abroad. Should terminally ill adults be allowed to kill themselves with their physician's assistance? While a few American states—as well as Holland, Switzerland, Belgium, and Luxembourg—have answered "yes," in the vast majority of the United States, assisted death remains illegal. This book provides a historical and comparative perspective that not only frames contemporary debates about assisted death and deepens readers' understanding of the issues at stake, but also enables realistic predictions for the likelihood of the future diffusion of legalization to more countries or states—the consequences of which are vast. Spanning a period from 1906 to the present day, Dying with Dignity: A Legal Approach to Assisted Death examines how and why pleas for legalization of "euthanasia" made at the beginning of the 20th century were transmuted into the physician-assisted suicide laws in existence today, in the United States as well as around the world. After an introductory section that discusses the phenomenon of "medicalization" of death, author Giza Lopes, PhD, covers the history of the legal development of "aid-in-dying" in the United States, focusing on case studies from the late 1900s to today, then addresses assisted death in select European nations. The concluding section discusses what the past legal developments and decisions could portend for the future of assisted death.
Author: Committee on Care at the End of Life Publisher: National Academies Press ISBN: 0309518253 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 457
Book Description
When the end of life makes its inevitable appearance, people should be able to expect reliable, humane, and effective caregiving. Yet too many dying people suffer unnecessarily. While an "overtreated" dying is feared, untreated pain or emotional abandonment are equally frightening. Approaching Death reflects a wide-ranging effort to understand what we know about care at the end of life, what we have yet to learn, and what we know but do not adequately apply. It seeks to build understanding of what constitutes good care for the dying and offers recommendations to decisionmakers that address specific barriers to achieving good care. This volume offers a profile of when, where, and how Americans die. It examines the dimensions of caring at the end of life: Determining diagnosis and prognosis and communicating these to patient and family. Establishing clinical and personal goals. Matching physical, psychological, spiritual, and practical care strategies to the patient's values and circumstances. Approaching Death considers the dying experience in hospitals, nursing homes, and other settings and the role of interdisciplinary teams and managed care. It offers perspectives on quality measurement and improvement, the role of practice guidelines, cost concerns, and legal issues such as assisted suicide. The book proposes how health professionals can become better prepared to care well for those who are dying and to understand that these are not patients for whom "nothing can be done."
Author: James M. Humber Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 1592594484 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 159
Book Description
Physician-Assisted Death is the eleventh volume of Biomedical Ethics Reviews. We, the editors, are pleased with the response to the series over the years and, as a result, are happy to continue into a second decade with the same general purpose and zeal. As in the past, contributors to projected volumes have been asked to summarize the nature of the literature, the prevailing attitudes and arguments, and then to advance the discussion in some way by staking out and arguing forcefully for some basic position on the topic targeted for discussion. For the present volume on Physician-Assisted Death, we felt it wise to enlist the services of a guest editor, Dr. Gregg A. Kasting, a practicing physician with extensive clinical knowledge of the various problems and issues encountered in discussing physician assisted death. Dr. Kasting is also our student and just completing a graduate degree in philosophy with a specialty in biomedical ethics here at Georgia State University. Apart from a keen interest in the topic, Dr. Kasting has published good work in the area and has, in our opinion, done an excellent job in taking on the lion's share of editing this well-balanced and probing set of essays. We hope you will agree that this volume significantly advances the level of discussion on physician-assisted euthanasia. Incidentally, we wish to note that the essays in this volume were all finished and committed to press by January 1993.
Author: Robert Orfali Publisher: Hillcrest Publishing Group ISBN: 1936780186 Category : Family & Relationships Languages : en Pages : 254
Book Description
In this book the author makes a case for legalized physician-assisted dying. Using the latest data from Oregon and the Netherlands, he puts a new slant on perennial debate topics such as "slippery slopes," "the integrity of medicine," and "sanctity of life." This book provides an in-depth look at how we die in America today. It examines the shortcomings of our end-of-life system. You will learn about terminal torture in hospital ICUs and about the alternatives: hospice and palliative care. The author scrutinizes the good, the bad, and the ugly. He provides a critique of the practice of palliative sedation. The book makes a strong case that assisted dying complements hospice. By providing both, Oregon now has the best palliative-care system in America. This book, above all, may help you or someone you care about navigate this strange landscape we call "end of life." It can be an informed guide to "a good death" in the age of hospice and high-tech medical intervention.
Author: Mara Buchbinder Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520380223 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
How the legalization of assisted dying is changing our lives. Over the past five years, medical aid-in-dying (also known as assisted suicide) has expanded rapidly in the United States and is now legally available to one in five Americans. This growing social and political movement heralds the possibility of a new era of choice in dying. Yet very little is publicly known about how medical aid-in-dying laws affect ordinary citizens once they are put into practice. Sociological studies of new health policies have repeatedly demonstrated that the realities often fall short of advocacy visions, raising questions about how much choice and control aid-in-dying actually affords. Scripting Death chronicles two years of ethnographic research documenting the implementation of Vermont’s 2013 Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act. Author Mara Buchbinder weaves together stories collected from patients, caregivers, health care providers, activists, and legislators to illustrate how they navigate aid-in-dying as a new medical frontier in the aftermath of legalization. Scripting Death explains how medical aid-in-dying works, what motivates people to pursue it, and ultimately, why upholding the “right to die” is very different from ensuring access to this life-ending procedure. This unprecedented, in-depth account uses the case of assisted death as an entry point into ongoing cultural conversations about the changing landscape of death and dying in the United States.
Author: Judith M. Stillion, PhD, CT Publisher: Springer Publishing Company ISBN: 0826171427 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 444
Book Description
Delivers the collective wisdom of foremost scholars and practitioners in the death and dying movement from its inception to the present. Written by luminaries who have shaped the field, this capstone book distills the collective wisdom of foremost scholars and practitioners who together have nearly a millennium of experience in the death and dying movement. The book bears witness to the evolution of the movement and presents the insights of its pioneers, eyewitnesses, and major contributors past and present. Its chapters address contemporary intellectual, institutional, and practice developments in thanatology: hospice and palliative care; funeral practice; death education; and caring of the dying, suicidal, bereaved, and traumatized. With a breadth and depth found in no other text on death, dying, and bereavement, the book disseminates the thinking of prominent authors William Worden, David Clark, Tony Walter, Robert Neimeyer, Charles Corr, Phyllis Silverman, Betty Davies, Therese A. Rando, Colin Murray Parkes, Kenneth Doka, Allan Kellehear, Sandra Bertman, Stephen Connor, Linda Goldman, Mary Vachon, and others. Their chapters discuss the most significant facets of early development, review important current work, and assess major challenges and hopes for the future in the areas of their expertise. A substantial chronology of important milestones in the contemporary movement introduces the book, frames the chapters to follow, and provides guidance for further, in-depth reading. The book first focuses on the interdisciplinary intellectual achievements that have formed the foundation of the field of thanatology. The section on institutional innovations encompasses contributions in hospice and palliative care of the dying and their families; funeral service; and death education. The section on practices addresses approaches to counseling and providing support for individuals, families, and communities on issues related to dying, bereavement, suicide, trauma, disaster, and caregiving. An Afterword identifies challenges and looks toward future developments that promise to sustain, further enrich, and strengthen the movement. KEY FEATURES: Distills the wisdom of pioneers in and major contributors to the contemporary death, dying, and bereavement movement Includes living witness accounts of the movement's evolution and important milestones Presents the best contemporary thinking in thanatology Describes contemporary institutional developments in hospice and palliative care, funeral practice, and death education Illuminates best practices in care of the dying, suicidal, bereaved, and traumatized
Author: Heather Conway Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317964349 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
The fate of the dead is a compelling and emotive subject, which also raises increasingly complex legal questions. This book focuses on the substantive laws around disposal of the recently deceased and associated issues around their post-mortem fate. It looks primarily at the laws in England and Wales but also offers a comparative approach, drawing heavily on material from other common law jurisdictions including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. The book provides an in-depth, contextual and comparative analysis of the substantive laws and policy issues around corpse disposal, exhumation and the posthumous treatment of the dead, including commemoration. Topics covered include: the legal frameworks around burial, cremation and other disposal methods; the hierarchy of persons who have a legal duty to dispose of the dead and who are entitled to possession of the deceased’s remains; offences against the dead; family burial disputes, and the legal status of burial instructions; the posthumous use of donated bodily material; and the rules around disinterment, and creating an appropriate memorial. A key theme of the book will be to look at the manner in which conflicts involving the dead are becoming increasingly common in secular, multi-cultural societies where the traditional nuclear family model is no longer the norm, and how such legal contests are resolved by courts. As the first comprehensive survey of the laws in this area for decades, this book will be of use to academics, lawyers and judges adjudicating on issues around the fate of the dead, as well as the death industry and funeral service providers.
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Publisher: National Academies Press ISBN: 030947695X Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 179
Book Description
The question of whether and under what circumstances terminally ill patients should be able to access life-ending medications with the aid of a physician is receiving increasing attention as a matter of public opinion and of public policy. Ethicists, clinicians, patients, and their families debate whether physician-assisted death ought to be a legal option for patients. While public opinion is divided and public policy debates include moral, ethical, and policy considerations, a demand for physician-assisted death persists among some patients, and the inconsistent legal terrain leaves a number of questions and challenges for health care providers to navigate when presented with patients considering or requesting physician-assisted death. To discuss what is known and not known empirically about the practice of physician-assisted death, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a 2-day workshop in Washington, DC, on February 12â€"13, 2018. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.
Author: Katie Engelhart Publisher: St. Martin's Press ISBN: 1250201470 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 283
Book Description
“A remarkably nuanced, empathetic, and well-crafted work of journalism, [The Inevitable] explores what might be called the right-to-die underground, a world of people who wonder why a medical system that can do so much to try to extend their lives can do so little to help them end those lives in a peaceful and painless way.”—Brooke Jarvis, The New Yorker More states and countries are passing right-to-die laws that allow the sick and suffering to end their lives at pre-planned moments, with the help of physicians. But even where these laws exist, they leave many people behind. The Inevitable moves beyond margins of the law to the people who are meticulously planning their final hours—far from medical offices, legislative chambers, hospital ethics committees, and polite conversation. It also shines a light on the people who help them: loved ones and, sometimes, clandestine groups on the Internet that together form the “euthanasia underground.” Katie Engelhart, a veteran journalist, focuses on six people representing different aspects of the right to die debate. Two are doctors: a California physician who runs a boutique assisted death clinic and has written more lethal prescriptions than anyone else in the U.S.; an Australian named Philip Nitschke who lost his medical license for teaching people how to end their lives painlessly and peacefully at “DIY Death” workshops. The other four chapters belong to people who said they wanted to die because they were suffering unbearably—of old age, chronic illness, dementia, and mental anguish—and saw suicide as their only option. Spanning North America, Europe, and Australia, The Inevitable offers a deeply reported and fearless look at a morally tangled subject. It introduces readers to ordinary people who are fighting to find dignity and authenticity in the final hours of their lives.
Author: Lonny Shavelson Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 0684801000 Category : Assisted suicide Languages : en Pages : 248
Book Description
Featuring moving accounts of terminally ill people who have faced the choice of ending their own lives, this book adds a profound human dimension to the debate over assisted suicide
Author: Giza Lopes
Author: Committee on Care at the End of Life
Author: James M. Humber
Author: Robert Orfali
Author: Mara Buchbinder
Author: Judith M. Stillion, PhD, CT
Author: Heather Conway
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Author: Katie Engelhart
Author: Lonny Shavelson