The Quality of Life

How best may those of us who have our wits about us care for old, frail people whose minds are lost forever? The Quality of Life springs from Janet Lembke's experiences during her mother's slow decline after suffering two strokes. She examines death by choice--suicide, assisted or otherwise, the bioethics of withdrawal of life support, advance medical directives and living wills, dementia and how to cope with it, hospice, and objective criteria for assessing quality of life. Lembke interviewed many people, including two women who helped their mothers die, several doctors, a priest, a rabbi, and a Muslim bioethicist. The book concludes with a list of resources, among them the Alzheimer's Association and the National Institute on Aging.