Because it expresses my own orientation, I carry in my wallet a membership card to the Society for the Right to Die, which has imprinted on the back a signed statement of my living will.

When the aging process accelerates inexorably, you usually don’t just fail to wake up one morning because of old age. One of the many illnesses that afflict the elderly with increasing frequency will likely be the cause of death and dying. Here is where I feel a living will is important. (more…)

Rheumatoid Arthritis affects approximately 1% of the world’s population. Rheumatoid Arthritis
is a chronic, multisystem, autoimmune, and inflammatory disorder that involves peripheral joints in a symmetric distribution. The potential of the synovial inflammation to cause cartilage damage and bone erosions and subsequent changes in joint integrity is the feature of the disease. (more…)

Approximately 35% of the factors that influence life expectancy are inherited. Accelerated aging is therefore usually associated with genetic abnormalities. None of the accelerated aging syndromes, however, leads to a uniform, systematic “speeding up” of the aging process. A number of genetic disorders can lead to premature or accelerated aging (also referred to as progerias), including Down syndrome, Hutchinson– Gilford syndrome, and Werner’s syndrome. (more…)

Since the 1960s a number of critiques have been developed about the misrepresentations inherent in the images which portray minority groups. Critiques have been increasingly made of what are seen as demeaning images of women, gays, the living elderly index, ethnic groups and regional minorities. Here the assumption is that such groups suffer from the imposition of negative stereotypes: images which do not accurately represent their everyday realities and aspirations. (more…)

Hospice care became a recognized benefit under Medicare in 1983, and approximately 90% of all hospice programs are Medicare certified. As 28% of all Medicare costs go to persons in their last year of life, and 50% of such costs are expended during the last 2 months of life, (more…)

‘‘What is death?’’ is a classic question that has been much pondered by philosophers and theologians through the centuries. Today, the question has become, ‘‘When is this person dead?’’ Traditionally, this determination was made by observing the lack of respiration, pulse, and response to stimulation as well as by lowered body temperature (hypothermia). (more…)

When my wife’s mother, “Grandma G,” died, she left us many gifts and intangibles. She also left us something very tangible, that in the immediate hour of need, was her most thoughtful gift. She had prearranged and paid for her funeral in exacting detail. This single act, greatly lowered the magnitude of stress that her death had caused. (more…)