March 27, 2023
(NPR) – Just before Christmas, federal health officials confirmed life expectancy in America had dropped for a nearly unprecedented second year in a row – down to 76 years. While countries all over the world saw life expectancy rebound during … Read More
March 14, 2023
(New York Times) – “In all probability, hospice should have been considered” for these patients, said Sara Douglas, a co-author and oncology researcher at the Case Western Reserve University School of Nursing. Yet the majority of both groups — 58 … Read More
February 23, 2023
(NPR) – The U.S. government doesn’t know how many people die in law enforcement custody or while imprisoned each year, according to a new report by The Leadership Conference Education Fund and the Project on Government Oversight. Citing data from … Read More
February 22, 2023
(Wired) – Accounting for the dead and letting families know the fate of their relatives is a human rights imperative written into international treaties, protocols, and laws like the Geneva Conventions and the International Committee of the Red Cross’ (ICRC) Guiding Principles for … Read More
February 21, 2023
(Associated Press) – Hospice care is treatment designed to make patients comfortable and to reduce pain and suffering in their final days. It is usually home-based, but can also be provided in nursing homes, hospitals and hospice centers. It is … Read More
February 10, 2023
(JAMA) – Although patients such as McMath are legally dead, they do not undergo the decay and putrefaction that is normally associated with death. In fact, patients with brain death may retain most of the capacities of living people, including … Read More
February 6, 2023
(New York Times) – An Alzheimer’s care center in Iowa was fined $10,000 after mistakenly declaring a patient dead, according to a report from the state’s Health Department. The patient, a 66-year-old woman who was not named in the report, … Read More
February 6, 2023
The Journal of Medicine & Philosophy (vol. 47, no. 5, 2022) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “‘Accompanied Only by My Thoughts’: A Kantian Perspective on Autonomy at the End of Life” by Anna Magdalena Elsner and Vanessa … Read More
January 26, 2023
(Kaiser Health News) – The recent upsurge in at-home deaths started in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, and the rate has continued to climb, outlasting the rigid lockdowns at hospitals and nursing homes that might help explain the … Read More
January 17, 2023
(Reuters) – During a busy shift at the height of Beijing’s COVID wave, a physician at a private hospital saw a printed notice in the emergency department: doctors should “try not to” write COVID-induced respiratory failure on death certificates. Instead, … Read More
