Assisted Dying : An Ethnographic Murder Mystery on Florida's Gold Coast

Assisted Dying is an ethnographically based murder mystery that uses the unexplained deaths of elderly people on Florida "s Gold Coast as a way of examining American cultural values. Diversity, immigration and the American Dream, aging, retirement, death, and dying are just some of the issues that are illuminated. Cultural anthropologist Julie Norman is drawn deeper into the mystery when her aunt becomes the latest victim. Julie "s ethnographic methodology and cultural perspectives, her previous involvement in a murder case recounted in The Gift of a Bride: A Tale of Anthropology, Matrimony and Murder, along with the insights of Detective Mike Cardella and the Miami police department, all help to solve the mystery. Assisted Dying engages students as a supplementary text to apply concepts from the social sciences, literature, and communications to issues of current interest in the United States and beyond. The novel is part of a popular movement toward using alternative and creative forms to convey academic information and concepts in the classroom. To further this aim, the social and cultural content of each chapter is extended in a bibliographic essay and discussion questions. This book will be welcomed in courses on cultural anthropology, medical anthropology, sociology, gerontology, American studies, psychology, gender, ethnic studies, and other social sciences. Ethical and legal issues concerning physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia are very much on the public agenda in many jurisdictions. In this timely book L.W. Sumner addresses these issues within the wider context of palliative care for patients in the dying process. His ethical conclusion is that a bright line between assisted death and other widely accepted end-of-life practices, including the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, pain control through high-dose opioids, and terminal sedation, cannot be justified. In the course of the ethical argument many familiar themes are given careful and thorough treatment: conceptions of death, the badness of death, the wrongness of killing, informed consent and refusal, the ethics of suicide, cause of death, the double effect, the sanctity of life, the 'active/passive' distinction, advance directives, and nonvoluntary euthanasia. The legal discussion opens with a survey of some prominent prohibitionist and regulatory regimes and then outlines a model regulatory policy for assisted death. Sumner concludes by defending this policy against a wide range of common objections, including those which appeal to slippery slopes or the possibility of abuse, and by asking how the transition to a regulatory regime might be managed in three common law prohibitionist jurisdictions Assisted Dying is an ethnographically-based murder mystery that uses the unexplained deaths of elderly people on Florida's Gold Coast to examine American cultural values. Diversity, immigration and the American Dream, and aging, retirement, death, and dying are just some of the issues illuminated. The novel skillfully draws readers in, teaching students key concepts in the social sciences as they follow cultural anthropologist Julie Norman in her quest to solve the dark mystery.