The Dying Experience

Reviews / Votes

LiPuma (Cuyahoga Community College) and DeMarco (Cleveland State Univ.)-both philosophers-offer an informed, well-argued, and boundary-pushing defense of expanded medical interventions at the end of life. Drawing on data indicating serious limitations in current pain management strategies, the authors argue that physician assistance in hastening death is a morally appropriate option that demonstrates compassionate concern for terminal patients facing unbearable suffering and loss of dignity. The authors argue that public policy should open options currently unavailable to those whose suffering exceeds the limits of pain relief through palliation. They present a strong case for the humaneness of assisted suicide even in cases of progressive dementia disorders. While protecting those suffering decision-making impairments, the authors center ethical concern at the end of life on the competent and autonomous patient making decisions grounded in informed consent, and they defend medical interventions to hasten death, including physician assisted suicide and euthanasia. This bold, thoughtful, and mature study revisits end-of-life issue with ethical sophistication, challenging six-month limits for defining "terminal" and questioning the usefulness of the double effect doctrine. Case studies demonstrate the end-of-life problems the authors are seeking to rectify.

Summing Up: Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and professionals. * Choice Reviews * LiPuma and DeMarco boldly challenge us to consider end of life options that align with realities of medicine, palliative care, and social supports in the US today. Through riveting case studies and exploration of religious and secular thought, moral theory, and ethics, they propose a framework for broadening approaches to what they unapologetically acknowledge as "hastening death." Clinicians, educators, policy-makers, and the informed public must read this work. -- Kathryn L. Weise, MD, MA Bioethics This book moves brilliantly between philosophy, clinical studies, and the analysis of medical cases taken from different jurisdictions. The authors firmly argue that as a matter of public policy the options for patients to hasten their death should be expanded, also to include PAS and euthanasia. For judging such requests, they present criteria that might do within American (medical) culture. -- Freddy Mortier, Professor of Ethics, Ghent University