Scripting Death

"Mara Buchbinder's rich description of the law, bureaucracy, and the hurdles to scripting physician aid-in-dying provides an eye-opening, sometimes disturbing answer to the question of how we can foster health care justice when it comes to assisted dying. Costs, access, community, the burden of time, and the pragmatics of choice loom large here. A provocative, necessary book."--Sharon R. Kaufman, author of Ordinary Medicine: Extraordinary Treatments, Longer Lives, and Where to Draw the Line "This marvelous, unsettling book documents how a new law on assisted dying gets translated into practice. With sensitivity and nuance, Buchbinder describes the new forms of exclusion as well as sociality that this 'aspirational death' has created, and the dilemmas for physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and others involved."--Janelle S. Taylor, Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto "The trained eye of an ethnographer sees things ordinary observers don't, and the trained eye of an ethnographer committed to careful neutrality is particularly valuable. Partisans on both sides of the debate over medical aid-in-dying should read this perceptive and informative book: it will enhance the vision of all."--Margaret Pabst Battin, author of The Least Worst Death: Essays in Bioethics on the End of Life