Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System - Softcover

Kiernan, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 031237464X ISBN 13: 9780312374648

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2007

Synopsis

In the 1970s, most people died swiftly and brutally: of heart attacks, strokes, cancer, or in accidents. But in the past three decades, medical advances have extended our lives and changed the way we die. In "Last Rights", Stephen P. Kiernan reveals the disconnect between how patients want to live the end of life - pain free, functioning mentally and physically, surrounded by family and friends - and how the medical system continues to trial the dying - with extreme interventions, at immense costs, and with little regard to pain, human comforts, of even the stated wishes of patients and families.Backed with surveys, interviews, and intimate portraits of people from all walks of life, this book will be for our time what Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's books were for a previous generation.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen P Kiernan is a writer and journalist for the Burlington Free Press. His numerous awards include the Gerald Loeb Award for Financial Journalism, the Associated Press Managing Editors Freedom of Information Award, and the George Polk Award. He lives in Charlotte, Vermont.

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 031237464X
• ISBN 13: 9780312374648
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320