An examination of the contemporary medicalization of death and dying that calls us to
acknowledge instead 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.
