Incurable and Intolerable

Incurable and Intolerable PDF Author: Jason Szabo
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813547105
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Terminal illness and the pain and anguish it brings are experiences that have touched millions of people in the past and continue to shape our experience of the present. Hospital machines that artificially support life and monitor vital signs beg the question: Is there not anything that medical science can offer as solace? Incurable and Intolerable looks at the history of incurable illness from a variety of perspectives, including those of doctors, patients, families, religious counsel, and policy makers. This compellingly documented and well-written history illuminates the physical, emotional, social, and existential consequences of chronic disease and terminal illness, and offers an original look at the world of palliative medicine, politics, religion, and charity. Revealing the ways in which history can shed new light on contemporary thinking, Jason Szabo encourages a more careful scrutiny of today's attitudes, policies, and practices surrounding "imminent death" and its effects on society.

Incurable and Intolerable

Incurable and Intolerable PDF Author: Jason Szabo
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813547105
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
Terminal illness and the pain and anguish it brings are experiences that have touched millions of people in the past and continue to shape our experience of the present. Hospital machines that artificially support life and monitor vital signs beg the question: Is there not anything that medical science can offer as solace? Incurable and Intolerable looks at the history of incurable illness from a variety of perspectives, including those of doctors, patients, families, religious counsel, and policy makers. This compellingly documented and well-written history illuminates the physical, emotional, social, and existential consequences of chronic disease and terminal illness, and offers an original look at the world of palliative medicine, politics, religion, and charity. Revealing the ways in which history can shed new light on contemporary thinking, Jason Szabo encourages a more careful scrutiny of today's attitudes, policies, and practices surrounding "imminent death" and its effects on society.

Chronic Disease in the Twentieth Century

Chronic Disease in the Twentieth Century PDF Author: George Weisz
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421413027
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Chronic Disease in the Twentieth Century challenges the conventional wisdom that the concept of chronic disease emerged because medicine's ability to cure infectious disease led to changing patterns of disease. Instead, it suggests, the concept was constructed and has evolved to serve a variety of political and social purposes. How and why the concept developed differently in the United States, an United Kingdom, and France are central concerns of this work. While an international consensus now exists, the different paths taken by these three countries continue to exert profound influence. This book seeks to explain why, among the innumerable problems faced by societies, some problems in some places become viewed as critical public issues that shape health policy. -- from back cover.

Physician-Assisted Death

Physician-Assisted Death PDF Author: James M. Humber
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1592594484
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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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.

Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking

Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking PDF Author: Timothy E. Quill
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190080736
Category : MEDICAL
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Many people who are experiencing unacceptable suffering or deterioration in the present, or who fear them in the near future, do not know their full range of options to hasten death. This is particularly true if they live in jurisdictions that do not allow a physician assisted death - over forty jurisdictions in the U.S. and most countries across the world. Though VSED is readily available, and not illegal, most people are unaware of it as an option. The informationin this book is vital to those considering their options either hypothetically or in real time, providing an integrated, balanced, and nuanced exploration of VSED with contributions from legal, medical, and ethical experts.

The Cancer Problem

The Cancer Problem PDF Author: Agnes Arnold-Forster
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192635751
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The Cancer Problem offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in nineteenth-century Britain. It begins by looking at a community of doctors and patients who lived and worked in the streets surrounding the Middlesex Hospital in London. It follows in their footsteps as they walked the labyrinthine lanes and passages that branched off Tottenham Court Road; then, through seven chapters, its focus expands to successively include the rivers, lakes, and forests of England, the mountains, poverty, and hunger of the four nations of the British Isles, the reluctant and resistant inhabitants of the British Empire, and the networks of scientists and doctors spread across Europe and North America. The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain argues that it was in the nineteenth century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease's incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art

The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 892

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Book Description


The War Within - Between Good and Evil

The War Within - Between Good and Evil PDF Author: Bhimeswara Challa
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 707

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Book Description
The human has always prided himself as an exceptional ‘moral species’ but has always been haunted by two questions: ‘Why am I not good when I want to be; ‘why do I do bad when I don’t want to’. This is at the heart of what scriptures and sages have long alluded to as the eternal internal struggle-between good and evil - that wages in the human consciousness. The book posits that much of our confusion and angst stems from our inability to recognize the ramifications of this ‘war’ between two sides of our own ‘self’. It is because we are ignoring this ‘war’ between two sides of our own ‘self’. It is because we are ignoring this war that we are losing all other wars of the world. That ignorance is the primary source of all the horrors, malevolence, and violence that fill us with so much dread. But a ‘favorable’ outcome is possible only if the forces of goodness are aided to get an upper hand consistently - and that calls for two cathartic changes: consciousness-change by inducing a turn from the mind to the heart; and contextual-change, by radically reconstructing the roles of morality, money, and mortality in our everyday lives. The book offers a menu of insights and options we all can use to tilt the scales in the war waging inside each of us.

Why My Wife Had To Die

Why My Wife Had To Die PDF Author: Brian Verity
Publisher: Envelope Books
ISBN: 191502336X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
The terrifying fact is this: Huntington's disease leads to physical and mental deterioration. There is no cure. It is handed down genetically, with a 1:2 chance of inheritance that cannot be determined until the disease shows itself, often not until the sufferer is in their 40s. Many do not know they have the gene or are at risk of passing it on. Those who do know, because a parent has suffered from it, may wait a lifetime before finding out whether they are safe or not. The prospects are horrific. After his first marriage failed, Brian Verity had a breakdown and married the woman who nursed him back to health. Within a few years, she began showing the signs of Huntington's that he had seen in other members of her family and that he had a morbid fear of. Having fallen in love with her in hospital, he now found himself repelled, fearful of his own psychological fragility and inability to cope and yet committed to protecting her from the terrible distress that lay in wait. In his view, assisted dying was her only option. Was he right? In this tough, uncompromising book, Brian Verity raises difficult ethical questions about the freedoms granted to carriers of the Huntington's gene to raise children of their own and the lack of freedom given to them to end their lives. This is not a book with a happy ending, nor have its full ramifications yet been embedded into our supposedly caring society.

Healing into Life and Death

Healing into Life and Death PDF Author: Stephen Levine
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307773698
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
A guide to healing meditation, from revered teacher Stephen Levine. Drawing on years of first-hand experience working with the chronically ill, here Levine presents original techniques for working with pain and grief. Addressing the choice and application of treatment, discussing the development of a merciful awareness as a means of healing, and providing practical meditation techniques as well as personal anecdotes from his career, Levine has crafted a valuable resource for anyone dealing with pain—physical or mental.

The Inevitable

The Inevitable PDF Author: Katie Engelhart
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250201470
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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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.