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SEDUCED BY DEATH

DOCTORS, PATIENTS, AND THE DUTCH CURE

Should the US follow the Dutch model of legalized euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide? An American psychiatrist specializing in treating the suicidal answers this question with a vehement ``No.'' A founder and executive director of the research-oriented American Suicide Foundation, Hendin (Suicide in America, 1982, etc.) examined the Dutch experience by visiting the Netherlands, studying court cases, interviewing Dutch physicans, and analyzing the historical and cultural factors that led to the country's acceptance of euthanasia and assisted suicides. He asserts that Dutch doctors conceded to him privately that euthanasia is out of control—a 1991 government report revealed that in over 1,000 cases physicians actively hastened or caused death without any request from the patient—but publicly they continue to promote it, and the Dutch courts continue to support their decisions. He concludes that a system that was ostensibly created to foster patient autonomy and self- determination has actually increased the paternalistic power of the medical profession. What we can learn from the Netherlands, says Hendin, is not to follow their lead. In the US, he argues, legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide would become a forced choice for large numbers of the poor, minorities, and the elderly. Instead, what's needed is a shift away from the medicalization of death to an acceptance of death as the inevitable end of life, better physican education in recognizing depression and in care of the dying, and better palliative care for the terminally ill. Two passages in the book are especially memorable: Hendin's bleak description of a Dutch film on euthanasia, Death on Request, which reveals medical abuses, and his account of his mother's death, which demonstrates that easy answers are hard to come by. Hendin's own arguments against euthanasia and assisted suicide are not new, but his revelations about the Dutch experience are a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-393-04003-8

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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