Death and Dying

Abstract

An examination of the contemporary medicalization of death and dying that calls us to acknowledge death's existential and emotional realities. Death is a natural, inevitable, and deeply human process, and yet Western medicine tends to view it as a medical failure. In their zeal to prevent death, physicians and hospitals often set patients and their families on a seemingly unstoppable trajectory toward medical interventions that may actually increase suffering at the end of life. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines the medicalization of death and dying and proposes a different approach—one that acknowledges death's existential and emotional realities. The authors—one an academic who teaches and studies end-of-life care, and the other a physician trained in hospice and palliative care—offer an account of Western-style death and dying that is informed by both research and personal experience. They examine the medical profession's attitude toward death as a biological dysfunction that needs fixing; describe the hospice movement, as well as movements for palliative care and aid in dying, and why they failed to influence mainstream medicine; consider our reluctance to have end-of-life conversations; and investigate the commodification of medicine and the business of dying. To help patients die in accordance with their values, they say, those who care for the dying should focus less on delaying death by any means possible and more on being present with the dying on their journey.

Vaccination and Trust in the National Health System among HIV+ Patients: An Italian Cross-Sectional Survey

“…It is also interesting to highlight how, although vaccination against herpes zoster with Recombinant Zoster Vaccine (RZV) was authorised only on 30 September 2021, in Piedmont [ 34 ], and that the window period of our study was from November 2021 to April 2022, a good adherence/willingness rate for vaccination was found. In fact, although only 13.2% of our sample declared having been vaccinated against herpes zoster, it is also true that 39.6% declared that they intended to undergo the vaccination or had already planned it for the following weeks.…”

Digital Death and Spectacular Death

“…In her book The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford (1963) illustrates how the US funeral industry has heavily manipulated death and grief in its profit-seeking business strategy over the last century. Further, privately owned medical companies providing care for dying people, or end-of-life care businesses, including hospices and institutions of palliative care, stand out as examples of the commodification of the death care system in society (Piemonte and Abreu 2021).…”

Economic Viability and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Budget of the Biomethane Retrofit of Manure-Operated Biogas Plants: A Case Study from Piedmont, Italy

“…The GHG assessment at a plant scale can be projected at a regional scale, considering statistics on biogas plants in Piedmont. As of 2017, 190 biogas plants were installed in this region with a total electric power of 126.1 MW el [51] and none produced biomethane. Most of these plants (126) started operating between 2008 and 2012 so they benefit from the same incentive regime of the plant studied in this study (i.e., DM 2008, see Table 1).…”