X-Message-Number: 26798 From: "marta sandberg" <> Subject: Will We Ever Arrive at the Good Death? Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 13:23:37 +0800 From The New York Times: Will We Ever Arrive at the Good Death? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/magazine/07DYINGL.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&en=413e43cf5cddaca4&ex=1139284800&rd=hcmcp?p=0492Qm0492Rx4zRHJ012000mGmpXGms1&nl=ep&emc=ep The article is long, but it contains enough interesting bits to hang in there. For example, take this small snippet when physicians are asked whether they will abide by a patient's advance directives, like do-not-resuscitate orders, the majority of them say, in essence, ''It depends.'' In July of last year, the Archives of Internal Medicine published a survey that found that 65 percent of physicians wouldn't necessarily follow a living will if, for example, its instructions conflicted with the doctor's own ideas of the patient's prognosis or expected quality of life. Or this snippet But death doesn't usually announce itself in advance, like the Grim Reaper knocking on the door in an old New Yorker cartoon. The major killers have idiosyncratic ''dying trajectories,'' says Lynn, most of which make the prediction of the actual time of death virtually impossible It is a well-written article that looks sympathetically at this difficult area. A lot has been said in this forum about the best way to die from a cryonic perspective, but I am not sure that everybody understands just what is involved in the dying process. If you have the time, it would be helpful to read the article carefully Marta _________________________________________________________________ Sell your car for $9 on carpoint.com.au http://www.carpoint.com.au/sellyourcar Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26798