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Lawrence Hrubes

A Pioneer for Death With Dignity - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...pioneer-for-death-with-dignity

ethics science medicine health law death

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 18 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • More than two decades before Brittany Maynard’s public advocacy for death with dignity inspired lawmakers in Washington, D.C., and at least 16 states to introduce legislation authorizing the medical practice of aid in dying for the terminally ill, Senator Frank Roberts of Oregon sponsored one of the nation’s first death-with-dignity bills.
  • Medical aid in dying has always had enormous public support. Recent polls by Gallup and Harris show that 69 to 74 percent of people believe terminally ill adults should have access to medical means to bring about a peaceful death. This belief is strong throughout the nation and across all demographic categories, including age, disability, religion and political party.
  • First, the phenomenon of Brittany Maynard has transformed the movement for end-of-life-choice into an unstoppable force. Ms. Maynard was the 29-year-old woman dying of brain cancer, who moved, with her family, from her home in California to establish residency in Oregon and gain access to aid in dying. As her pain and seizures escalated and as inevitable paralysis, blindness and stupor approached, she drank medication obtained under Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act and died quietly in a circle of her loved ones last fall. Her family vows to fulfill her legacy of legal reform in her native California and beyond. Young and old alike identify with Brittany Maynard. Her experience as a refugee for dignity sparks the “aha!” moment when people understand the grave injustice of government’s withholding from a competent, dying adult the elements of choice and control over suffering.
Lawrence Hrubes

Lights Out: A New Reckoning for Brain Death : The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...reckoning-for-brain-death.html

TOK science medicine death brain ethics

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 16 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 16 Jan 14
     
    "But brain death is not quite as certain as these bioethicists might like. A doctor can't always determine whether the brain is truly dead. The diagnosis is made the old-fashioned way: by careful observation. A doctor checks to see whether the eyes are responsive to light or touch; she pricks the nailbeds to discern whether the pain registers; she tests muscle reflexes; she determines whether the buildup of carbon dioxide triggers spontaneous breathing if the ventilator is shut off; and she may use an electroencephalograph to detect electrical activity in the brain. (However, even a dead brain may produce some voltage.) If all the findings are negative, then the declaration is made. Even then, the doctor can be wrong. "
markfrankel18

When are you dead? - 2011 SPRING - Stanford Medicine Magazine - Stanford University Sch... - 0 views

stanmed.stanford.edu/...article5.html

ToK psychology Science consciousness death medicine

shared by markfrankel18 on 20 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • A little more than 40 years ago, a partially functioning brain would not have gotten in the way of organ donation; irreversible cardiopulmonary failure was still the only standard for determining death. But during the 1970s, that began to change, and by the early 1980s, the cessation of all brain activity — brain death — had become a widely accepted standard. In the transplant community, brain death was attractive for one particular reason: The bodies of such donors could remain on respirators to keep their organs healthy, even during much of the organ-removal surgery. Today, the medical establishment, facing a huge shortage of organs, needs new sources for transplantation. One solution has been a return to procuring organs from patients who die of heart failure. Before dying, these patients are likely to have been in a coma, sustained by a ventilator, with very minimal brain function — a hopeless distance from what we mean by consciousness. Still, many people, including some physicians, consider this type of organ donation, known as “donation after cardiac death” or DCD, as akin to murder.
Lawrence Hrubes

Annals of Medicine: As Good as Dead : The New Yorker - 1 views

www.newyorker.com/...010813fa_FACT

TOK ethics medicine brain organ transplants death science

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 05 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 05 Jan 14
     
    "Confusion about the concept of brain death is not unusual, even among the transplant professionals, surgeons, neurologists, and bioethicists who grapple with it regularly. Brain death is confusing because it's an artificial distinction constructed, more than thirty years ago, on a conceptual foundation that is unsound. Recently, some physicians have begun to suggest that brain-dead patients aren't really dead at all-that the concept is just the medical profession's way of dodging ethical questions about a practice that saves more than fifteen thousand lives a year."
Lawrence Hrubes

Map Reveals The Distinctive Cause Of Death In Each State : Shots - Health News : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...e-cause-of-death-in-each-state

maps health classification

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 20 May 15 - No Cached
  • There's no getting around the strangeness of a map that shows the most distinctive cause of death in each of our 50 states and the District of Columbia. In Texas, it's tuberculosis. In Maine, it's the flu. And in Nevada, it's the ominous "legal intervention." But what does it mean to label a cause of death distinctive?
markfrankel18

Have 1,200 World Cup workers really died in Qatar? - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...magazine-33019838

TOK math human sciences soccer FIFA

shared by markfrankel18 on 06 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • But the Indian Government says in a press release: "Considering the large size of our community, the number of deaths is quite normal."The point officials are making is that there are about half a million Indian workers in Qatar, and about 250 deaths per year - and this, in their view, is not a cause for concern. In fact, Indian government data suggests that back home in India you would expect a far higher proportion to die each year - not 250, but 1,000 in any group of 500,000 25-30-year-old men. Even in the UK, an average of 300 for every half a million men in this age group die each year.Tim Noonan from the ITUC believes the comparison is misleading. The migrant workers in Qatar are not only young, they are fit. "Qatar requires them to be given a medical examination to screen them for pre-existing conditions, so this is comparing apples and pears," he says. Of course, India is a very poor country and Qatar is a very rich country - the richest in the world in terms of GDP per capita - so it's perfectly reasonable to say that Qatar should do better by its migrant workers. But then it is. So is the figure of 1,200 Qatar World Cup deaths just meaningless? No, says Tim Noonan. He denies the ITUC came up with the figure just to get headlines. In fact he thinks the real figure may well be higher. "To describe a problem is the correct thing to do," he says. "And we believe we've described it accurately and conservatively."
Lawrence Hrubes

Atul Gawande: How Do Good Ideas Spread? : The New Yorker - 2 views

www.newyorker.com/...130729fa_fact_gawande

TOK science medicine childbirth paradigm idea ideas health innovation

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 01 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 01 Jan 14
     
    "The global problem of death in childbirth is a pressing example. Every year, three hundred thousand mothers and more than six million children die around the time of birth, largely in poorer countries. Most of these deaths are due to events that occur during or shortly after delivery. A mother may hemorrhage. She or her baby may suffer an infection. Many babies can't take their first breath without assistance, and newborns, especially those born small, have trouble regulating their body temperature after birth. Simple, lifesaving solutions have been known for decades. They just haven't spread."
markfrankel18

Medical Technology Makes 'Time of Death' Harder to Pinpoint - Atlantic Mobile - 0 views

m.theatlantic.com/...386968

TOK ethics death medicine

shared by markfrankel18 on 15 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The line between life and death is best defined not by machines, but by patients’ beliefs about what kind of life gives them meaning, and how much they would endure to extend it. If
Lawrence Hrubes

How Judaism's definition of death can boost organ donations - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/health-38230114

religious knowledge systems ethics medicine death

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 11 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • When Robert Berman, an Orthodox Jew from the US, settled in Jerusalem, he was not prepared for the strong resistance to his argument for organ donation from some sections of the society. To advance his cause he has had to engage in the most profound and tricky discussions on religion and death.Many Orthodox rabbis have described the act of taking organs from a brain-dead person as retzicha - tantamount to murder.
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC World Service - More or Less, The death toll in Syria - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/p01fyvkc

TOK maths statistics SocialScience BBCRadioMoreOrLess podcast

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 08 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 08 Sep 13
     
    As global leaders remain divided on whether to carry out a military strike against Syria in response to the apparent use of chemical weapons against its people, Tim Harford looks at the different claims made about how many people have been killed. The United States, the UK and France are sharing intelligence, but all quote different estimates of how many people they think died in the attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces. Tim speaks to Kelly Greenhill, a professor of political science at Tufts University in the US, and co-author of Sex, Drugs and Body Counts about why the numbers vary so widely. And he speaks to Megan Price from the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, who has been trying to keep a tally of the deaths in Syria since the conflict began.
Lawrence Hrubes

Danish Radio Station Defends Host Who Clubbed Rabbit to Death During Animal Welfare Deb... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ing-animal-welfare-debate.html

ethics animals

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 27 May 15 - No Cached
  • A radio station in Denmark argued on Tuesday that it was merely fulfilling its public service mandate to provoke debate when the host of a morning show beat a baby rabbit to death with a bicycle pump this week during a live discussion of animal welfare.Jorgen Ramskov, the editor in chief of Radio 24syv, a private station supported by fees from listeners, explained in an email that the killing of a nine-week-old rabbit named Allan during a broadcast on Monday was intended to highlight the Danish public’s “hypocrisy when it comes to animal welfare.”
Lawrence Hrubes

Adapting Real-Life Events Like Klinghoffer's Death - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-like-klinghoffers-death.html

TOK arts history ethics

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 23 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • As far as I could tell, there were no protesters in the vicinity of Lincoln Center on Nov. 15 before a Saturday matinee, the final performance of “The Death of Klinghoffer” at the Metropolitan Opera. This was a big change from the opening night of the Met’s season in September and the premiere of the “Klinghoffer” production last month, when hundreds of angry demonstrators gathered to denounce this opera by the composer John Adams and the librettist Alice Goodman as an anti-Semitic work that dared to humanize terrorists. Of course, Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath. But the only sign I saw being held outside the Met at the sold-out matinee said, “I need a ticket!” in big red letters.This was also to have been the day of a live HD simulcast of “Klinghoffer.” But Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, canceled the broadcast, bowing to pressure from the Anti-Defamation League, whose leaders were concerned about the work’s gaining international exposure at a time of a rise in anti-Semitic actions.
Lawrence Hrubes

When A Tattoo Literally Means Life Or Death : Shots - Health News : NPR - 2 views

www.npr.org/...-means-life-or-death-literally

ethics health death medicine doctors

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 21 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • The tattoo stretched across the man's chest. It said "Do Not Resuscitate." His signature was tattooed at the end. "We were shocked," remembers Holt. "We didn't know what to do." The tattoo, and the hospital's decision about what it required of them, has set off a conversation among doctors and medical ethicists around the country about how to express one's end-of-life wishes effectively, and how policymakers can make it easier.
Lawrence Hrubes

What Does It Mean to Die? | The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...what-does-it-mean-to-die

ethics medicine death brain science biology

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 22 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • Thousands of lives were prolonged or saved every year because patients declared brain-dead—a form of death eventually adopted by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and most of Europe—were now eligible to donate their organs. The philosopher Peter Singer described it as “a concept so desirable in its consequences that it is unthinkable to give up, and so shaky on its foundations that it can scarcely be supported.” The new death was “an ethical choice masquerading as a medical fact,” he wrote.
markfrankel18

PLOS ONE: Digital Language Death - 0 views

www.plosone.org/...10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0077056

TOK language internet

shared by markfrankel18 on 18 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken today, some 2,500 are generally considered endangered. Here we argue that this consensus figure vastly underestimates the danger of digital language death, in that less than 5% of all languages can still ascend to the digital realm. We present evidence of a massive die-off caused by the digital divide.
markfrankel18

Why is the 'mor' in 'Voldemort' so evil-sounding? - The Week - 0 views

theweek.com/...-in-voldemort-so-evil-sounding

TOK language literature

shared by markfrankel18 on 13 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • So what's the deal with "mor"? Is there something to the syllable that suits it for melancholy, darkness, and villainy? We have to be careful here. There are more words out there that have "mor" that don't carry such dark tones. The names Morgan, Maureen, and Maurice aren't so sinister (well, possibly excepting the case of Piers Morgan), and people just wanted more and more of Mork from Ork. So we can't say that this "mor" sound carries darkness and death wherever it goes. But we can say that it has some dark associations available if we want to use them. For starters, the Latin "mor" root (as in moribund and mortal and French words such as morte) refers to death; there is an old Germanic root mora for darkness, which shows up in words such as murky; our modern word murder comes from an Old English word morth for the same; and, of course, a morgue is a place where dead bodies are kept. That's enough to give a familiar ring. And every evil name that has "mor" in it adds to the weight of the association, especially when they're famous evil names. In fact, "mor" may be what is sometimes called a phonestheme: a part of a word that tends to carry a certain connotation not because of etymology or formal definition but just by association.
Lawrence Hrubes

Letter from Nairobi: The Death of Kofi Awoonor : The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...he-murder-of-kofi-awoonor.html

TOK arts poetry Africa Nairobi terrorism attack

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 28 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 28 Sep 13
     
    "On Saturday, September 21st, the Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor was shot dead at Nairobi's Westgate mall by terrorists."
markfrankel18

At what moment are you dead? - Randall Hayes | TED-Ed - 0 views

ed.ted.com/...ent-are-you-dead-randall-hayes

TOK science ethics death

shared by markfrankel18 on 25 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • For as far back as we can trace our existence, humans have been fascinated with death and resurrection. But is resurrection really possible? And what is the actual difference between a living creature and a dead body anyway?
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