length of dying with medical technology. The medical profession, however, saw death as a failure and doctors frequently chose to avoid dealing with a patient who would soon die. As a result, patients were, and still are, heavily medicated, permitting them to slip away, unknowingly or snowed out(Williams 112), the complete opposite of the medieval period when men and women prepared themselves, made their peace, and then welcomed death. But by 1985, an estimated eighty- percent of those who died did so in a hospital or a nursing home, under the care of strangers. In addition, these strangers have been taught in their medical education that their job is to fend off death. So they perform their duties under the growing fear that if every effort is not made to postpone death they have failed and may be sued for a mercy killing (Knopf 8). Today death is often correlated with seriously ill or aging patients and physicians and other health care workers all over the world are receiving training to deal with death, hospice care is taking death out of the hospital and bringing it back to the home. Even though many still want to follow the traditional way in dealing with death, family, friends and health officials should be able to handle the situation in accordance with the best interest of the terminally ill patient. As people take death back into their own control, they demand the right to die when they feel ready. The right to die is becoming an increasingly controversial issue. As more people insist that the right to die is a personal liberty, others, with opposing views, feel strongly about preserving life at all costs and rally together to fight planned suicides, disconnecting support systems, and other efforts to end lives. Those who do not agree with their right to die, warrant those individuals and surrogates, who claim that right for mentally incompetent patients and seriously ill newborns, to exercise the proc...
