On a perfect sunny July 4th afternoon, Richard Galli and his family were celebrating the holiday at the home of some friends. The kids were playing in the pool, and the grown-ups were relaxing. Then the unthinkable happened. Galli's seventeen-year-old son, Jeffrey, dove into the pool, struck his head, and nearly drowned. Although Galli saved his son's life, Jeffrey was paralyzed with a devastating spinal cord injury. Rescuing Jeffrey is a compelling look at the next ten days. In this disarmingly honest account, Galli wrestles with a horrible predicament: Should he let his son live as a quadriplegic, unable to move or breathe on his own? Or should Galli "rescue" his son again-this time by removing Jeffrey's life support? Galli weighs this question with intelligence and stark emotional intensity. For ten days he struggles to comprehend a future he never imagined for his son. During those ten days two parents are forced to make the most difficult decision of their lives. "I had brought my son back to life," Galli writes, "and then I had to find a way to kill him." Although Galli assumes the burden of choosing death for his minor son, convincing others that the decision is correct, in the end that decision is taken away. Battered by bad luck, shock, and medication, unable even to lift a finger, Jeffrey finds the power to make the decision himself. Rescuing Jeffrey is a bluntly eloquent story about tragedy and love and the choices we make at the brink of survival. It is a story that asks what, after all, is a life worth living?

Dr. Kevorkian has helped more than a dozen terminally-ill people kill themselves. As a result, physician-assisted suicide has once again become a red-hot debate, with the inventor of the "suicide machine" at the center. Now the famed doctor talks about why he continues his struggle.

Approximately two-thirds of deaths in the United States involve a doctor's partnership with an individual, whether it be for the administration of pain relief or sedation or for the act of discontinuing or not beginning life-sustaining treatment. In A Midwife through the Dying Process, Timothy Quill, M.D., explores that partnership and the complex end-of-life issues that surround physician-assisted death. Here are the stories of nine individuals and their very different endings, common only in each person's struggle to confront issues of law and ethics and to realize a "good"death.

The Supreme Court has ruled that states may prohibit physician-assisted suicide. Expressing the views of his fellow justices, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, "Americans are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality, and practicality of physician-assisted suicide. Our holding permits this debate to continue." Regulating How We Die is certain to be a landmark contribution to that debate. Dr. Linda Emanuel--one of America's most influential medical ethicists--has assembled leading experts to provide not only a clear account of the arguments for and against physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia but also historical, empirical, and legal perspectives on this complicated issue. These contributors include Marcia Angell, George Annas, Susan Wolf, and many others. The important questions are addressed here, including: What does mercy dictate? Does physician-assisted suicide honor or violate autonomy? Is it more dignified than natural death? Is this decision purely a private matter? Will legalizing physician-assisted suicide put us on a slippery slope toward involuntary euthanasia? And, in an analysis of data not available in any other book, what can we learn from Holland, the only country in which physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal? Regulating How We Die will be essential reading for anyone who has been handed a terminal diagnosis, for people close to those facing such a diagnosis, for professionals, including physicians, nurses, pastors, lawyers, legislators--indeed, for anyone who has considered the moral and political debate over doctor-assisted suicide.

"For me Dr. Quill is a hero—a physician with a head and a heart." —Betty Rollin, author of Last WishThis book looks squarely at how patients can make crucial decisions and take charge of the end of their lives. This book is a resource for anyone who fears unnecessary suffering and excessive medical intervention at that point. It helps readers think through and then complete advance directives, and also to take a more active role when they or a family member becomes terminally ill. Through real-life stories and his own experience, Dr. Quill explores what measures a patient can choose to prolong life and how to forgo such measures if they begin to extend a painful death, choosing instead approaches such as comfort care which emphasize quality more than quantity of life. Finally, Dr. Quill speaks out on physician-assisted suicide and why he helped a long-term patient of his, stricken with leukemia, to take her life when her suffering became intolerable. He asks for regulation, rather than denial, knowing that many patients and doctors ofen face this question at times of crisis.

An exploration of the hidden world of illicit physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. Through the frank and often troubling first-hand accounts of health professionals who have been involved in assisted death, it records this secret but real area of medical and nursing practice. Through face-to-face interviews with these "angels of death", Roger S. Magnusson explores the social practices, relationships and networks that constitute "underground" euthanasia. How is assisted death actually practised within health care settings? What are the issues that surround the making of such a momentous decision? How do health care workers justify their attitudes and actions in this area? This volume aims to offer detailed answers to these questions and many others. The doctors, nurses and therapists who were interviewed pseudonymously for this study work in the HIV/AIDS communities in the United States and Australia. Their perspectives and practices, attitudes and feelings, should illuminate the assisted death debate and expose a variety of disturbing issues, including the reality of "botched attempts", euthanasia without consent, and unduly hasty measures to bring about death.

You might be standing by the bedside of an ill or dying family member, facing agonizing moral and medical choices. Or you may be struggling with a disability, asking questions that seem to have no answers. Where can you find practical encouragement and realistic perspective to help you make the best decisions? Joni Eareckson Tada, herself a quadriplegic, helps you and your family tackle the hard questions about death, illness, and suffering, such as: - Is it ever right to choose death, either for yourself or a suffering loved one? - How can I make the best decisions in a medical crisis? - Where is God in the unanswerable questions? - Are our rights being protected? Stories of real people who have faced life-and-death decisions, practical suggestions for coping in crisis, and scriptural insight on the meaning of life help you find hope and answers in difficult situations. From the legal facts to the human factor, Joni brings a unique perspective to what makes life worth living and how to make health care choices with dignity, wisdom, and compassion. The Life and Death Dilemma, written with families' needs in mind, offers help and insight for those who are disabled, dying, or terminally ill. Complete with practical questions at the end of each chapter and full of relevant case studies, it offers help and guidance through one of the toughest issues families must face.

Modern medical technology has lengthened our lives and forever altered how we face our deaths--but it has also created painful dilemmas that lawyers, doctors, spiritual leaders, and, above all, patients and their families are struggling with every day. Now, in this sweeping yet intimate report on death in America, Marilyn Webb has written the one essential book we all need to understand and deal with these new realities.Drawing on more than four years of first-hand research and observation, Webb combines a journalist's objectivity with a passionate advocacy for people in pain. She has sat with dozens of dying patients--in high-tech teaching hospitals, in hospices, and in their homes. She has interviewed and worked with the leading legal experts and medical ethicists, pain specialists and psychologists, priests and spiritual counselors, as well as both advocates of assisted suicide and their determined opponents.