scholarly journals Frozen Bodies and Future Imaginaries: Assisted Dying, Cryonics, and a Good Death

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 584
Author(s):  
Jeremy Cohen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Brain Tissue ◽  
The United States ◽  
Good Death ◽  
Assisted Dying ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Manner Of Death ◽  
Aid In Dying ◽  
Life Options ◽  
Moral Necessity

In October of 2018, Norman Hardy became the first individual to be cryopreserved after successful recourse to California’s then recently passed End of Life Options Act. This was a right not afforded to Thomas Donaldson, who in 1993 was legally denied the ability to end his own life before a tumor irreversibly destroyed his brain tissue. The cases of Norman Hardy and Thomas Donaldson reflect ethical and moral issues common to the practice of assisted dying, but unique to cryonics. In this essay, I explore the intersections between ideologies of immortality and assisted dying among two social movements with seemingly opposing epistemologies: cryonicists and medical aid in dying (MAiD) advocates. How is MAiD understood among cryonicists, and how has it been deployed by cryonicists in the United States? What are the historical and cultural circumstances that have made access to euthanasia a moral necessity for proponents of cryonics and MAiD? In this comparative essay, I examine the similarities between the biotechnological and future imaginaries of cryonics and MAiD. I aim to show that proponents of both practices are in search of a good death, and how both conceptualize dying as an ethical good. Cryonics members and terminal patients constitute unique biosocial worlds, which can intersect in unconventional ways. As temporalizing practices, both cryonics and MAiD reflect a will to master the time and manner of death.

Palliative Care and Requests for Assistance in Dying

2019 ◽  
pp. 837-843
Author(s):  
Carey T. Ramirez ◽  
Kathleen Fundalinski ◽  
Judy Knudson ◽  
John Himberger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Palliative Care ◽  
District Of Columbia ◽  
The United States ◽  
Assisted Dying ◽  
Medical Aid ◽  
United States Population ◽  
Aid In Dying ◽  
Legal Foundations ◽  
Physician Assisted Dying

Assistance in dying, though highly controversial, is requested of an increasing number of palliative clinicians. This necessitates an exploration of the current nomenclature, history, and ethical and legal foundations of the topic, followed by an evaluation of the characteristics of those who request physician assisted dying (PAD), suggestions for responding to requests, and recommended alternatives. As of 2017, medical aid in dying is legal in six states and the District of Columbia, jurisdictions in which 16.4% of the United States population live. In 2018, 27 states are considering legalization. Furthermore, assisted dying and euthanasia are legal in five countries and assisted dying without euthanasia is legal in three. The goal of this chapter is to ensure palliative specialists are prepared to handle requests for physician assistance in dying.

Arguments over Ends

2020 ◽  
pp. 87-106
Author(s):  
Sara Rushing
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Assisted Dying ◽  
Life Care ◽  
Intellectual Courage ◽  
The Will ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Physician Assisted Dying

In the United States, vast resources are put into end-of-life care and there is resistance to wider reliance on hospice, not to mention physician-assisted dying. How does dying get managed, and how do decisions about death get produced, within the logics that pervade contemporary healthcare? This chapter explores this question by considering how dispositions of humility and impulses toward autonomy operate both for dying persons and the caregivers attending to them in death. It argues that a relationally supported process of emotionally preparing for dying provides an experience through which we can learn about humility, autonomy, and other dispositions important for critical democratic citizenship: self-knowledge, self-determination, intellectual courage, generosity toward self and others, openness to uncertainty, and the will to persevere in our aspirations despite undeniable fragility.

scholarly journals GoWInD: Wind Energy Spatiotemporal Assessment and Characterization of End-of-Life Activities

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 6015
Author(s):  
Francisco Haces-Fernandez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Wind Energy ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Wind Turbines ◽  
The United States ◽  
Temporal And Spatial Distribution ◽  
Continuous Growth ◽  
Disposal Options ◽  
Life Options

Concerns on the lack sustainable end-of-life options for wind turbines have significantly increased in recent years. To ensure wind energy continuous growth, this research develops a novel spatiotemporal methodology that sustainably handles end-of-life activities for wind equipment. This research introduces the Global Wind Inventory for Future Decommissioning (GoWInD), which assesses and characterizes wind turbines according to individual spatiotemporal decommissioning and sustainability attributes. Applying data from GoWInD, the research developments networks of end-of-life (EoL) centers for wind turbines. The placement and operational levels of EoL centers optimize sustainable decommissioning according to changing spatiotemporal features of wind turbines. The methodology was evaluated for the United States, developing the United States Global Wind Inventory for Future Decommissioning (US—GoWInD), implementing the network of United States end-of-life (US—EoL) centers. Significant imbalances on the temporal and spatial distribution of US wind decommissioning inventory were revealed by the system. Diverse options to effectively handle these imbalances were highlighted by the methodology, including US—EoL center optimization according to placement, operational levels and potential complementarities. Particular attention was paid to components with challenging disposal options. The system can be implemented for diverse geographical locations and alternative spatial and temporal resolutions.

The Ethics of Excess and Indian Intervention in South Asia

1989 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 73-100
Author(s):  
Ralph Buultjens
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
South Asia ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Historical Aspects

This article examines four interlinked historical aspects of intervention from a philosophic and ethical perspective. What are the dimensions of intervention and how is it managed? What conditions govern intervention? How can intervention be evaluated? What are the moral issues in intervention? India, the world's largest democracy, has promoted its power through intervention in neighboring countries under the cloak of morality. The United States, Great Britain, and Russia have nonetheless tacitly endorsed India's role as the policing force in the region. Does this recognition justify India's actions toward its weaker and smaller neighbors?

Religion, Religiosity, and the Moral Divide in Canadian Politics

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Ang ◽  
John R. Petrocik
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Salient Feature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Conflict ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Canadian Politics ◽  
Political Entrepreneur ◽  
Role Of Religion

AbstractSocial group conflict along regional, ethnic, linguistic, and religious cleavages is deeply embedded in the Canadian historical experience. Contemporary analyses, however, have deprecated the role of religion and religiosity in shaping Canadians' political attitudes. This analysis demonstrates that religion and religiosity are significant correlates of Canadian attitudes on moral issues, paralleling the pattern observed in the United States. It demonstrates that the religious cleavage has been a salient feature of Canadian politics for some time and considers whether the contemporary moral divide could serve as a portent of cultural-religious conflict in Canada if a “political entrepreneur” articulated an issue agenda linked to these religion-based differences.

The Food Crisis and the Church

Worldview ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-38
Author(s):  
J. Bryan Hehir
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Food Crisis ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Special Responsibility ◽  
The Church ◽  
Global Food ◽  
Unique Relationship ◽  
Global Food Crisis

My comments are based on the assumption that there is a global food crisis and that it will be with us for some time. In discussing it here my scope is quite limited. I wish to focus on the unique relationship which the United States has to the global problem and the consequent special responsibility which the Christian community in the United States has for the problem.The presentation will involve three steps: first, an analysis of the factual dimensions of the food crisis and the basic moral issues it poses; second, a description of why and how the United States bears a unique responsibility for the food question; third, a proposal regarding the potential of the Church in the United States to address the question of global and domestic hunger.

Object Lessons

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Anne Carter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Object Lessons ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Object Lesson ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States ◽  
Material Evidence

Object Lessons: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Learned to Make Sense of the Material World examines the ways material things—objects and pictures—were used to reason about moral issues, the differences between reality and representation, race, citizenship, and capitalism in the nineteenth-century United States. For modern scholars, an “object lesson” is simply a timeworn metaphor used to describe any sort of reasoning from concrete to abstract. But in the 1860s, object lessons were classroom exercises popular across the United States. Object lessons forced children to learn about the world through their senses instead of through texts and memorization, leading to new modes of classifying and comprehending material evidence drawn from the close study of objects, pictures, and even people. This book argues that object lessons taught Americans how to find information in things in the decades after the Civil War. More than that, this study offers the object lesson as a new tool with which contemporary scholars can interpret the meanings of nineteenth-century material, cultural, and intellectual life.

Euthanasia in an Aging America: An Ethical Challenge for Mental Health Counselors

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-138
Author(s):  
Samuel J. Skidmore ◽  
Sharon E. Robinson Kurpius
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
United States ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Terminally Ill ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mental Health Counselors ◽  
Assisted Dying ◽  
End Of Life Decisions ◽  
Life Decisions ◽  
Physician Assisted Dying

The average age of individuals in the United States and worldwide is steadily increasing, resulting in an increase in the number of older, terminally ill adults who may seek counseling for end-of-life decisions. Euthanasia is one such end-of-life option that is emerging in the United States. Physician-assisted dying, currently the only legal form of active euthanasia in eight states and the District of Columbia, is a relatively new and often misunderstood end-of-life option. Although arguments continue about this issue, the American Mental Health Counselors Association has developed ethical codes to guide mental health counselors working with terminally ill clients making end-of-life decisions. The core moral and ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, fidelity, and veracity provide guidance for helping terminally ill clients explore end-of-life options that could include physician-assisted dying when it is a legally viable option. Additional recommendations are made for increasing intellectual and emotional competence regarding euthanasia.

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