The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die

by Katie Engelhart

Overview

A riveting, incisive, and wide-ranging book about the Right to Die movement, and the doctors, patients, and activists at the heart of this increasingly urgent issue.

*Finalist for the New York Public Library's 2022 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism

“A remarkably nuanced, empathetic, and well-crafted work of journalism.”—Brooke Jarvis, The New Yorker

More states and countries are passing right-to-die laws that allow the sick and suffering to end their lives at pre-planned moments, with the help of physicians. But The Inevitable moves beyond margins of the law to the people who are meticulously planning their final hours—far from medical offices, legislative chambers, hospital ethics committees, and polite conversation. Further still, it shines a light on the people who help them: loved ones and, sometimes, clandestine groups on the Internet that together form the “euthanasia underground.”

Katie Engelhart, a veteran journalist, focuses on six people representing different aspects of the right to die debate. Two are doctors: a California physician who runs a boutique assisted death clinic and has written more lethal prescriptions than anyone else in the U.S.; an Australian named Philip Nitschke who lost his medical license for teaching people how to end their lives painlessly and peacefully at “DIY Death” workshops. The other four chapters belong to people who said they wanted to die because they were suffering unbearably—of old age, chronic illness, dementia, and mental anguish—and saw suicide as their only option.

Spanning North America, Europe, and Australia, The Inevitable offers a deeply reported and fearless look at a morally tangled subject. It introduces readers to ordinary people who are fighting to find dignity and authenticity in the final hours of their lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250827968
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/09/2022
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	390,234
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Katie Engelhart is a journalist and documentary filmmaker, based in Toronto and New York City. She is also a National Fellow at New America. She was the recipient of the 2021 George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting and the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Journalism. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic and many other publications. Previously, she was a graduate student of History and Philosophy at Oxford University.

Table of Contents

A Note on Sources xi

Introduction 1

1 Modern Medicine 21

2 Age 61

3 Body 99

4 Memory 142

5 Mind 180

6 Freedom 227

The End 272

Acknowledgments 285

A Timeline 287

Notes 291

Editorial Reviews

A remarkably nuanced, empathetic, and well-crafted work of journalism ... Engelhart gives eloquent voice to different sides of the intricate arguments.”—Brooke Jarvis, The New Yorker

“Katie Engelhart’s deeply researched and beautifully reported book raises familiar quandaries. Do people have a right to die on their own terms?”—The Economist

“An essential, vulnerable book…Like much great narrative journalism, The Inevitable powerfully justifies its form when mapping how people relate to each other outside dominant systems—in this case, how end-of-life care can exist away from, or in opposition to, big medicine.”—Elena Saavedra Buckley, Los Angeles Review of Books

“[A] searching, compassionate narrative…Evenhandedly and without undue criticism, Engelhart brings forth the counterarguments...but she offers enough convincing evidence about the efficacy and ethical standing of the right-to-die movement that many readers will be persuaded of its value to society.”—Kirkus Review

“A must-read for anyone concerned about quality of life at the end of life.”—Library Journal (starred)

“Through exhaustive reporting, Engelhart unflinchingly captures unsettling exit scenes that force readers to think about whether people must fulfill a ‘duty to live’ or whether they should be able to choose what they consider to be ‘dignity in dying.’”—Booklist

“Engelhart ably sets out the case for the right to choose when to die. I find it hard to imagine how a decent and rational person could resist it.” —Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene

“The Inevitable challenges us to keep looking and asking hard questions, even if we are uncomfortable... I couldn't stop reading.”—Anne–Marie Slaughter, author of Unfinished Business

“Katie Engelhart’s writing is honest, bold, unsparing. I’ve never read anything like this.”—Ali Velshi, host of MSNBC’s “Velshi”

“This is an extraordinarily moving book that will change forever the way we think about the longing for death.”—Larissa MacFarquhar, author of Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help

From the Publisher

★ 02/01/2021

Journalist Engelhart, rather than rehashing the arguments for and against assisted suicide (preferably known now as Medical Aid in Dying or Physician Assisted Death), presents the current state of the debate in the stories of six people: a California doctor who specializes in assisted death; a woman in England who buys Nembutal from Mexican veterinary supply stores; a young woman in New Mexico with multiple sclerosis who travels to a euthanasia clinic in Switzerland then changes her mind; a woman with dementia in Oregon; a young Canadian man with severe mental illness; and Dr. Philip Nitschke, the founder of Exit International, an organization that teaches people how to take their own lives. Engelhart does not take sides, but allows the individuals profiled to present their own stories. This fast-paced medical history also includes accounts of figures such as Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who campaigned for the legalization of assisted death and was arrested and tried for his role in the death of a patient. Nine states and the District of Columbia now have some sort of assisted dying statues, but the laws vary widely and there are many restrictions. VERDICT A must-read for anyone concerned about quality of life at the end of life.—Rachel Owens, Daytona State Coll. Lib., FL

Library Journal

2020-12-31
A survey of the history and current state of affairs of the right-to-die movement.

When the laws fall short or are subject to powerful economically or ideologically vested interests, people have always found a way to end the suffering of their lives. Working from the concept of a peaceful death being a basic human right, physician-assisted, rational suicide has usually been available, covertly if necessary. In this searching, compassionate narrative, journalist Engelhart explores “the push to wrest bodily control, at the end of natural life, from the behemoth powers of Big Medicine and the state,” an effort that “has been defined by individual stories”—in this case, doctors and individuals and their immediate, personal encounters with the administration of life-ending drugs and the paths that led them to that point. As the author recounts, the reasons for this increasingly public debate involve concepts of autonomy and the even more practical desire to avoid suffering and indignity. For many of the author’s interviewees, “planning death was often about avoiding indignity, something they imagined would be humiliating, degrading, futile, constraining, selfish, ugly, physically immodest, financially ruinous, burdensome, unreasonable, or untrue.” The author also examines instances in which patients were “treated and treated and overtreated,” which often prolonged agony and drained resources, whether individual or societal, and she digs into the even more complicated issues involved with patients suffering from dementia or other forms of mental illness. Evenhandedly and without undue criticism, Engelhart brings forth the counterarguments—e.g., the slippery path to eugenics and social Darwinism or that “maybe rational suicide was just a symptom of social and financial neglect, dressed up as a moral choice”—but she offers enough convincing evidence about the efficacy and ethical standing of the right-to-die movement that many readers will be persuaded of its value to society.

A meticulous and frank collection of end-of-life stories, conversations, and ideas.

Kirkus Reviews