A lucid, powerful argument for letting dying patients go gentle into that good night.
Orfali’s compelling manifesto explores the fraught ethics and surprisingly convenient practical details of physician-assisted dying.
In his Grieving a Soulmate, the author recounted the painful closing hours of his wife’s battle with cancer, an experience that inspired this call for voluntary euthanasia as a merciful way of ending the suffering of terminal patients. Here, Orfali surveys the typical American modes of dying and finds them wanting. Death in a hospital intensive care unit, he writes, is “a high-tech nightmare,” and while hospice care is more humane, it too relies on a kind of passive or slow euthanasia—deep sedation and the withholding of life support, food and water—that he finds full of pitfalls. Orfali prefers Oregon’s system of legal euthanasia by self-administered overdose of the barbiturate Nembutal in liquid form—a drug widely used by veterinarians to put down pets—that, he contends, quickly and reliably induces unconsciousness and a peaceful death. He argues that this is “the ultimate form of existential self-empowerment”—a painless, dignified demise on the patient’s own terms and timetable. Orfali presents a knowledgeable and spirited defense of euthanasia against its detractors: studies of assisted dying in Oregon, the Netherlands and Switzerland, he notes, show no slippery slope toward mass euthanasia nor any evidence that the elderly, the disabled or the poor are being pressured into suicide; and “pro-life vitalists” who insist that life should be prolonged no matter the circumstances, he argues, end up imposing unbearable pain on others in the name of an abstract religious moralism. Orfali approaches this agonizing subject with common sense informed by extensive research and an acute sensitivity to the dilemmas faced by dying patients and their families and doctors. The result is a thought-provoking contribution to the debate over this explosive issue.
A lucid, powerful argument for letting dying patients go gentle into that good night.Pub Date: April 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1936780181
Page Count: 253
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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