Since the dawn of history, many people have believed that human beings do not simply cease to exist upon their death. Numerous religions and cultures teach that the physical body may die and decompose but that some element of the person goes on to what many call the "afterlife." Between 1972 and 1982, when the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research asked the American public, …
Most Americans say they are not afraid of death. A September 2000 Los Angeles Times poll called "Aging in America" reported by Susan Pinkus, Jill Richardson, and Elizabeth Armet found that people over age sixty-five think about and fear death the least, while those ages eighteen to twenty-nine think about and fear it the most. Only 7% of those age sixty-five and older say they are af…
National surveys of the adult population by the Alliance for Aging Research (AAR) have found that Americans would generally like to live longer. In 2001 six in ten Americans (63%) said they would like to live to be one hundred years old. Men (68%) and those ages eighteen to thirty-six (69%) were more likely to want to live to be one hundred years old. These findings are similar to AAR studies from…
The General Social Survey 2002 and the General Social Survey 2004, both conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, found that 58% of respondents in each survey approved of suicide if a person had an incurable disease, but only a small minority approved of it if the person had gone bankrupt (8% [2002], 11% [2004]), had dishonored his or her family (9% [2002], 11…
Many advocates of physician-assisted suicide believe that people who are suffering from uncontrollable pain should be allowed to end their lives with a lethal dose of medication prescribed by their physician. Dr. Marcia Angell, for example, former executive editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, claims that "those with cancer, AIDS, and other neurologic disorders may die by inches a…
The death of Terri Schiavo on April 1, 2005, and the events leading up to her death resulted in an intense debate among Americans over end-of-life decisions and brought new attention to the question of whom should make the decision to stop life support, most specifically nutrition and hydration. Terri Schiavo died on April 1, 2005, after her feeding tube was withdrawn days earlier. Schiavo had bee…
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