Lord Bragg: I would seek assisted death rather than suffer Alzheimer’s
By Shiv Malik, The Guardian (May 05, 2013)
Writer and broadcaster reiterates wish to end own life rather than face severe mental degeneration and calls for change in UK law

For those keeping up with the UK’s ongoing Assisted Dying debate, this news item will certainly generate further discussion. Melvyn Bragg is a UK institution and well-respected across the board.

I was particularly struck by the article’s lead:

The veteran 73-year-old arts critic, novelist and broadcaster was deeply affected by watching Alzheimer’s take its toll on his 95-year-old mother for five years until her death last year, and said assisted suicide was an issue for people his age. “It’s happening to my generation – they see what happens when people get close to death, and we’re saying, ‘We don’t want that.’”

Bragg is right about his generation and the end of life control many of them want.

Death Ref hasn’t run a long(ish) update on the UK Assisted Dying debate in a while, so I will start pulling items together.

Until then, keep listening to In our Time with Melvyn Bragg. It’s the best programme on the BBC Radio 4.

Platforms for Haunting: The Talking Dead
SxSW Interactive 2013

In March 2013, the Death Reference Desk headed to the South by Southwest Interactive conference.

A podcast of Death Ref John’s talk has now been released and you can listen to it below.

He was part of presentation called Platforms for Haunting: The Talking Dead.

Here is a description of the presentation.

The relationship between death and technology is as old as human civilisation; from cenotaph to facebook memorial, industries have been built on our desire to remember and be remembered. Technology now enables us to create spine-chilling immersive experiences; allowing us to embody the worlds of our ancestors, enter our ghost stories and even plan a little post-mortem haunting ourselves. We want to move the conversation beyond discussions of data legacy to ask whether we can engender a new form of history, one that allows us to interact with the dead.

I want to be remembered for something

Bringing together experts in human remains, memorialisation and new technology this Panel will explore our relationship with mortality in a digital age. The discussion will draw on recent projects which have used new technology to augment cemeteries, populate historic sites with ghosts of their past and instigate twitter conversations with a 1,610 year old woman.

Death Bunny of Easter by Obsidian Signum

No holiday can escape the bony grasp of ye olde Death Reference Desk!

R.I. governor vetoes ‘domestic partners’ burial bill
Katherine Gregg, The Providence Journal, (November 10, 2009)

Note: This post first ran in November 2009. We’re reposting it today in anticipation of this week’s US Supreme Court cases regarding same-sex marriage. Most people do no realize the legal obstacles same-sex partners often face when attempting to claim their partner’s corpse given the lack of either a marriage license or any statutory recognition of the relationship. This 2009 story from Rhode Island demonstrates all the issues. See our section on same-sex partners for more information. Two final notes. Donald Carcieri is no longer Rhode Island’s Governor and in January 2010 the RI Legislature overrode the Governor’s veto.

When a person dies, his or her body needs to be claimed by the next of kin. If no kin can be found, then that dead body is handled by local authorities. The legal question of who (or whom) qualifies as next of kin is a real dilemma when it involves domestic partners who have been together for numerous years but lack any say over the final disposition of the body. Asserting a legal claim over the control of the corpse is a key issue for same-sex marriage proponents as well as domestic partnership advocates (which would cover heterosexual couples too).

Last week, in Rhode Island, the Governor vetoed a new Domestic Partners bill that would have granted same-sex and opposite-sex partners next of kin status for claiming dead bodies. This Providence Journal article discusses the veto and why Governor Carcieri did what he did.

I promise that in the future, people will look back and read these histories with disbelief.

You need only read this section of the Providence Journal article to understand why:

At a hearing this year on one of the stalled bills to allow same-sex marriage, Mark S. Goldberg told a Senate committee about his months-long battle last fall to persuade state authorities to release to him the body of his partner of 17 years, Ron Hanby, so he could grant Hanby’s wish for cremation — only to have that request rejected because “we were not legally married or blood relatives.”

Goldberg said he tried to show the police and the state medical examiner’s office “our wills, living wills, power of attorney and marriage certificate” from Connecticut, but “no one was willing to see these documents.”

He said he was told the medical examiner’s office was required to conduct a two-week search for next of kin, but the medical examiner’s office waited a full week before placing the required ad in a newspaper. And then when no one responded, he said, they “waited another week” to notify another state agency of an unclaimed body.

After four weeks, he said, a Department of Human Services employee “took pity on me and my plight … reviewed our documentation and was able to get all parties concerned to release Ron’s body to me,” but then the cremation society refused to cremate Ron’s body.

“On the same day, I contacted the Massachusetts Cremation Society and they were more than willing to work with me and cremate Ron’s body,” and so, “on November 6, 2008, I was able to finally pick up Ron’s remains and put this tragedy to rest.”

“I felt as if I was treated not as a second-class citizen, but as a noncitizen,” Goldberg told the Senate Judiciary Committee, an hour into the first hearing this year in the 13-year push by gay-rights advocates for the right to marry in Rhode Island, and the pushback from the Roman Catholic Church and other opponents.

Kathy Kushnir, executive directive of the advocacy group Marriage Equality of Rhode Island, called the governor’s veto “unconscionable” when “people are trying to piece their lives together, which is what Rhode Island is requiring them to do without legal recognition,” and then when “faced with a time that could not be more difficult or more painful, not even being able to take care of funeral arrangements for their loved ones.”

Platforms for Haunting: The Talking Dead
South by Southwest Interactive media conference
Saturday, March 9
5:00PM – 6:00PM
Radisson Town Lake
Town Lake Ballroom
111 E Cesar Chavez

The Death Reference Desk is headed to the 2013 South by Southwest (SxSW) Interactive media conference in Austin, Texas.

Doing our best to keep Austin weird!

Death Ref is part of a panel, Platforms for Haunting: The Talking Dead, on death, technology, the dead body and the future relationships of all these things. Same old same old, really. Death Ref John’s Future Cemetery project will also be involved.

Here is the panel’s description so that everyone can see what they’re missing (or seeing– if you’re at SxSW):

The relationship between death and technology is as old as human civilisation; from cenotaph to facebook memorial, industries have been built on our desire to remember and be remembered. Technology now enables us to create spine-chilling immersive experiences; allowing us to embody the worlds of our ancestors, enter our ghost stories and even plan a little post-mortem haunting ourselves. We want to move the conversation beyond discussions of data legacy to ask whether we can engender a new form of history, one that allows us to interact with the dead.

I want to be remembered for something

Bringing together experts in human remains, memorialisation and new technology this Panel will explore our relationship with mortality in a digital age. The discussion will draw on recent projects which have used new technology to augment cemeteries, populate historic sites with ghosts of their past and instigate twitter conversations with a 1,610 year old woman.

Updates about SxSW will appear here on the Death Ref blog, on Death Ref’s Facebook page and on the Twitter Feed of Death!

The Twitter feeds to watch are: @DeathRef, #SxSW, #haunting, @FutureCemetery, and @ReactHub

Anyone in Austin should come on up and say howdy!

And then after Death Ref is done with the SxSW panel, we’re all going to the Alamo’s basement to look for our stolen bicycle.

‘Erasing Death’ Explores The Science Of Resuscitation
Fresh Air with Terry Gross (February 20, 2013)

Terry Gross, of Fresh Air and National Public Radio fame, did a fascinating interview with Dr. Sam Parnia regarding his new book on human death experiences.

I’ll let Fresh Air describe it:

What happens when we die? Wouldn’t we all like to know. We can’t bring people back from the dead to tell us — but in some cases, we almost can. Resuscitation medicine is now sometimes capable of reviving people after their heart has stopped beating and their brain has flat-lined; Dr. Sam Parnia, a critical care doctor and director of resuscitation research at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine, studies what these people experience in that period after their heart stops and before they’re resuscitated. This includes visions such as bright lights and out-of-body experiences.

Often described as near-death experiences, Parnia prefers the term “after death.”

This is one of the more interesting near death/after death discussions that I have heard in a long time. It’s a fascinating topic, laden with metaphysics and theology, but Parnia’s research approach seems to use science, medicine, philosophy, and religion.

And for anyone in Generation X, such as myself, Parnia’s work will automatically conjure images of an after death Kevin Bacon in the 1990 classic Flatliners.

Poor sad Billy Mahoney.

Note: This post originally ran in June 2012, but given the recent Emergency Alert System messages televised in both Michigan and Montana (hahahaha) about Zombie attacks, DeathRef decided to re-run it.

Naked Man Killed by Police Near MacArthur Causeway was ‘Eating’ Face Off Victim
Daniela Guzman and Julie K. Brown, Miami Herald (May 28, 2012)

We all knew that it was going to happen sooner or later. The Undead would RISE UP and begin their unstoppable decimation of the Living. Oh the HUMANITY!

Here at the Death Reference Desk we never thought that Miami, Florida would be ground zero for the Zombie Apocalypse but there you have it.

In perhaps the greatest understatement of all time, a Miami police official explained how it is that an officer could repeatedly shoot a man who was discovered chewing the face off of another man in the middle of the road:

Sergeant Altarr Williams, supervisor of Miami police’s Homicide Unit, said a man doesn’t have to be armed to be dangerous.

“There are other ways to injure people,’’ Williams said. “Some people know martial arts, others are very strong and can kill you with their hands.’’

Or, maybe just maybe the person is a freaking ZOMBIE!

Your good friends at DeathRef have been preparing for the inevitable Zombie Attack and we’ve assembled an entire section on zombies.

So, make sure that you’ve got everything that you need in your Zombie Apocalypse Survival Kit and listen to these wise words from the late, great Dennis Hopper.

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 found the following (longish) section of text the most compelling:

When asked whether it was time to put Byron [the dog] “to sleep,” our vet said he used the 50 percent rule: Were at least half of Byron’s days good days? Or was it two bad days for every good? When you get to the latter, he explained, it’s time.

This conversation gave me pause for two reasons. First, what did Byron want? Was 50 percent good enough for him? How about 70? Or 20? There was, of course, no way to know.

Which brings me to my second reason for pause. When not serving as faithful servant to our tiny dog, I am a geriatrician. Because older adults have a greater range of needs and abilities than any other age group, and because there is a national shortage of geriatricians, I care for the frailest and sickest among them.

To many people’s surprise, most of my patients are as satisfied with their lives as they were when they were less debilitated. But this isn’t true for everyone, and some are eager to say they’ve had enough. They are bedbound or dependent, unable to do any of the things they once valued so dearly — working, caring for their families, eating solid food or even hearing the conversation of those who come to see them. Still others cannot express their wishes or needs but sit propped in chairs frowning and grimacing, despite attentive care and trials of antidepressants and pain medications.

“Why doesn’t God want me?” asked a 96-year-old felled by multiple strokes and fed through a tube.

“Can’t you do something?” begged an 89-year-old with advanced Parkinson’s disease and incontinence who would have killed himself if only he still could.

And these were two people who lived relatively comfortably with frequent visits from loving families. But others, even those with similar or equal disabilities, might feel just as strongly that they want to preserve their lives at any cost. They would never choose euthanasia.

Of course, we can’t have a 50 percent rule for humans. Because who decides? These are vulnerable people, and while the world is full of dedicated, self-sacrificing caregivers, it also contains far too many people who stand to gain from death (through inheritance) or from continuing life (in the form of Social Security checks or cheap housing).

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 altogegether.

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 radio programme 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.

Terminal Thoughts
Will Self, BBC Radio 4 (January 11, 2013)
Will Self wants to “nudge society in the direction of considering suicide acceptable” when the alternative is a slow and painful end. “I don’t say any of these things idly,” he writes, “like many of us in middle age, my last few years have been heavily marked by an increasing awareness of both my own mortality and that of those who I love.”

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.