We all die eventually, of course, but these days it’s very hard for doctors and loved ones to let patients and relatives die without doing “whatever it takes”.
We have – in some of the world – sanitised death, but the custom of post-mortem photography reminds us death is closer to us than we might like to think. This article contains images of dead people.
We all know the rock adage of “live fast, die young” but is membership of different music genres associated with different risks of early death and different causes of death? Surprisingly, yes …
Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. So said Kevin Arnold in The Wonder Years. Now that we spend so much time online, our digital…
My mother died recently and at the funeral home I was asked if I had any ideas what kind of coffin she would like. For some reason I said something environmentally friendly. These words came out of my…
The first cricket Test match of the Australia summer is usually a happy occasion. Its retro sights of white-flannelled figures and the comforting sound of bat on ball herald the holiday season even for…
For most of us, death conjures up strong feelings. We project all kinds of fears onto it. We worry about it, dismiss it, laugh it off, push it aside or don’t think about it at all. Until we have to. Of…
Horse racing claimed the lives of three jockeys recently – two in Australia and one in the United States – and some prominent industry professionals have openly claimed that deaths in racing are part of…
Earlier this year, start-up Eterni.me emerged from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Entrepreneurship Development program. The company’s tagline – “simply become immortal” – quickly attracted media…
A. David Lewis, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Among comic book fans, there’s the joke that the only characters in superhero comics who stay dead are Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben, Batman’s parents, and Captain America’s sidekick Bucky. For everybody else…
Headstones at the Dudley Park cemetery in Payneham, South Australia, were recently bulldozed as part of the ongoing “recycling” of more than 400 graves. Some people were shocked to realise that gravesites…
The diagnosis of a palliative illness in a child or adolescent is devastating for all involved: parents, family members and the children themselves, as they grieve for life they had planned and believed…
Halloween is boring. I used to think this quite often when I was young. Not because I didn’t enjoy wearing costumes or collecting candy or even being chased by random neighbourhood dogs while trick or…
At some stage, you will die. You may not know the time, date or circumstance of your death, but you do know it’s inevitable. Contemplating this fact can be uncomfortable. It evokes anxiety and fear in…
Visiting Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch Children's Research Institute; Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, University of Melbourne; Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford