When Editors Write Obituaries

Another nice column from Elizabeth Lardie at Lemondrop in which she explores her reluctance over writing obituaries for people she does not know:

"I really don't think obituaries should ever be written by some no-name editor with a lot of deadlines and little life perspective. ... Because of this cookie-cutter process, obituaries start sounding like postmortem personal ads to me. "He was romantic, honest and loved eating out. In his spare time, he enjoyed taking long walks on the beach."

When my grandfather passed away, my family and I wrote his obituary. Has anyone had an experience with an obituary of a loved one being written by a paper's editor and not their actual family? I'd be curious to hear what it's like from the other side.

NPR Tribute to Eartha Kitt

NPR has posted an audio link to a 1993 piano jazz session with Eartha Kitt—the woman Orson Welles once called the most exciting woman in the world.

If you don't know Kitt apart from her role as catwoman on the old Batman TV show, you should check out the clip. She is graceful, classy, vivacious and full of life.

And, of course, it doesn't hurt that she was sexy as hell and approached life with great humor.

Merry Christmas!

Televised Assisted Suicide in the U.S.

In the comments below, Dethmama asks whether assisted suicide has ever been televised in the U.S., as they have just done in Britain.

This is by no means a comprehensive answer, but I was reminded of 60 Minutes' interview with Dr. Jack Kevorkian from 1998, during which they televised the euthanasia of a man with Lou Gehrig's disease. (It was an actual euthanasia; Dr. Kevorkian was responsible for the act of death.) 

The interview was what led to Kevorkian's imprisonment for second-degree murder. He served about nine years of a 10–25 year sentence. 

I can't find the actual clip of the first interview, but I found this clip from a follow-up interview that shows most of the original piece within it. However, CBS' site won't let me embed it, so you'll have to follow the link to view. 

There are some marked differences between the U.S. piece and the British piece:

*First, the U.S. piece is as much about Kevorkian as it is about assisted suicide. 

*Second, I'm really struck by how the British piece gives the dying man a voice. And I realize someone with advanced Lou Gehrig's disease cannot speak well ... but there are other things that could be done—talking more to family, photos of his past, stories, etc. 

*Third, the British piece showed us an assisted suicide done through legal channels, so we are well positioned to confront the issue. The shock value of breaking the law, doing things behind closed doors, with shady methodology, all of that is gone. Dr. Kevorkian lost his medical license in 1991. Thus, he didn't have access to the usual cocktail of barbituates used for assisted suicide. What we see in the U.S. piece are his makeshift means. In the British piece, the man's death feels peaceful; he says goodbye to his wife. I see a death with dignity. In the U.S. piece, I see a more haphazard way of ending suffering. 

Today Show on Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

The Today Show had a segment this morning on the importance of keeping up-to-date carbon monoxide detectors in your home. As you would expect, the story began with the tale of a family who almost died due to carbon monoxide ... luckily they realized something was wrong and called 911 when they all came down with the same dramatic symptoms at the same time.

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I don't want to minimize the threat of carbon monoxide poisoning. Obviously, having a detector in your home is not a bad idea. And it's a terrible, avoidable tragedy if anyone dies by accidental carbon monoxide poisoning.

I'd just like to point out—I can't remember the last time I saw a major news show do a segment on the importance of keeping smoke detectors up-to-date. And according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, every year, accidental carbon monoxide poisoning kills 170 people, on average. In contrast, in 2006, fire claimed the lives of 2,580 people—that according to the Center for Disease Control.

This all reminds me of Amanda Ripley's book The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why, which I blogged about earlier this year. She came up with an equation about what elicits fear:

Dread = Uncontrollability + Unfamiliarity + Imaginability + Suffering + Scale of Destruction + Unfairness

Both fire and carbon monoxide poisoning rank fairly high on this scale, but the carbon monoxide poisoning is especially potent. If you watch the NBC clip, you can imagine being the family, sleeping at home, and not even knowing a "silent killer" is attacking. The scale of destruction is low, but the suffering is high, it's unfamiliar to many of us, and it's certainly uncontrollable in many ways—that sense heightened by the fact that carbon monoxide is tasteless, odorless, and invisible. And with something like a poisonous gas that randomly seeps into the air, fairness doesn't even come into play. It gets pretty high marks on the fear scale.

What? A TV show using fear to hook in viewers? You're shocked, I know.

Anyway, get a carbon monoxide detector if you want. But if you're concerned about utility, check your smoke detector batteries first.

Assisted Suicide in Britain

Controversy has flared up over assisted suicide in Britain this past week.

This catalyst was a televised assisted suicide—the suicide of Craig Ewert who was 59 and suffering from motor neuron disease.




Ewert took a fatal dose of barbiturates in a Zurich clinic in 2006, although the documentary covering his decision and final act was first shown just last week.

Assisted suicide is illegal in Britain. According to the NY Times, about 100 Britons have committed assisted suicide in the past decade or so—by traveling to Switzerland or other locations where assisted suicide is legal.

I'm really glad the show aired. You all know I support death with dignity and assisted suicide, but beyond that, even for people who are against this movement, discussions like this get us all thinking and talking about death. And the more it comes into the open, the less alien it becomes. And I hope, the less frightening it becomes.

Ewert's wife was quoted in the New York Times saying, “For Craig, my husband, allowing the cameras to film his last moments in Zurich was about facing the end honestly,” she wrote in The Independent, a British newspaper. “He was keen to have it shown because when death is hidden and private, people don’t face their fears about it.”

My thoughts exactly.

NEJM Piece on Death with Dignity

From the New England Journal of Medicine, a nice overview piece on the passage of the Death with Dignity Act in Washington state, how it compares to the law in Oregon, what the two laws have meant for palliative care, and what they might mean for the future of palliative care.

It's a lot to cover in such a short article, but Dr. Robert Steinbrook offers a succinct and logical take on the controversies and goings-on.

One interesting point: due to legal challenges, Oregon law makers and health workers had about three years to figure out how to implement their version of the law, while Washington state will only have four months. How will this change the shape of care?