Dr. Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal, shares his vision of healthcare that helps people live well to the end.

PBS: BRIEF BUT SPECTACULAR – Dr. BJ Miller does not work to heal patients, but to ensure quality of life amid advanced or serious illness. Sometimes people suggest his job is depressing, but Miller doesn’t see it that way. When people are dying it changes how they live, he says. Miller gives his Brief but Spectacular take on dying and living.

At age 94, Rosemary Bowen hastened her death by voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) in 2018. For twenty years, Rosemary Bowen had told her family that she would hasten her death when she was no longer able to live independently. Several months after suffering a back injury, she decided that she was ready to die. Read our blog here.

Rosemary asked her daughter to make this video to show others that VSED could be a sensible end-of-life option.

In a wide-ranging and moving talk, spiritual activist and author Stephen Jenkinson advocates for dying well as every person’s right, and shares what he has learned from two decades of working with dying people and their families. Among many eye-opening revelations he points out the wisdom of the English language, whose verb “to die” cannot be used in the passive voice; unlike the death-phobic culture in which we live, it acknowledges that dying is what you do, not what happens to you.

B.J. Miller / TED Talk

Respecting Choices with End-of-life Care.