Customer Reviews

Final Acts of Love

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Stephen Jamison, PhD.
Final Acts of Love: Families, Friends, and Assisted Dying

(New York: Putnam, 1995) 279 pages

This book should be read by everyone who plans a voluntary death
or who plans to help someone else in a voluntary death--doctors included.
It is a very careful guide for exploring all the dynamics associated
with choosing to die and helping others to end their lives.
Final Acts of Love is based on interviews with 140 different people,
who assisted in 160 voluntary deaths.
Only 10% of these were reported as suicides.
The rest were attributed to natural causes.
The helpers were usually not doctors, but family members and friends.

Here are several of the cautions raised in this comprehensive discussion:
1. Is the medical diagnosis and prognosis clear to all?
2. Have all the medical options been explored, tried, and then rejected?
3. Has a specialist in the disease given a second opinion?
4. Is the patient asking for better treatment
or for loving attention rather than death?
5. Is the patient's judgment impaired by the disease or the treatment?
6. Is the patient irrationally depressed or suicidal?
7. Is the decision to die caused by a medical crisis?
8. Is the patient being pressured or manipulated by others
for personal or financial reasons?
9. Is the patient manipulating others into helping
when the he or she could achieve a voluntary death without help?
10. Does the patient have an irrational fear of nursing homes?
11. How many people have been involved in discussing the proposed death?
12. How many independent people agree that death is the best option?
13. What impacts will this death have on other people?
14. Has the patient's wish to die persisted over time?
15. How long a waiting period would ensure that death is a wise decision?
16. What special measures will be needed to make the death
appear to be "from natural causes" or a "private suicide"?
17. How will the death be reported and registered?
18. What people will be present for this voluntary death?
19. What roles will each person take in the life-ending process?
20. Is one helper too enthusiastic about causing death?
21. What will the helpers do if the first method of death fails?
22. Has concern for secrecy and the details of dying
obscured the possible meanings that might be realized from this death?
23. If I plan to help some other person to die,
what are my own personal, ethical, philosophical, or religious views
about assisting a voluntary death?
24. What safeguards and limits would I put on my participation?
25. What will be the impacts on those who help with a voluntary death:
psychological, moral, professional, political, & legal?

If you would like to read other books about helping in the last days,
search the Internet for: "Best Books on Voluntary Death".

James Leonard Park, advocate of the right-to-die with careful safeguards.