Microsoft Word Elisabeth Kubler-Ross On Death And Dying doc

suffering and their pain. There was a reward in heaven, and if we had suffered much here on earth 
we would be rewarded after death depending on the courage and grace, patience and dignity with 
which we had carried our burden. Suffering was more common as childbirth was a more natural, 
long and painful event'-:it the mother was awake when the child was born. There was 
 
purpose and future reward in the suffering. Now we sedate !r others, try to avoid pain and agony; 
we may even induce labor t:? have a birth occur on a relative's birthday or to avoid interference 
with another important event. Many mothers only wake up hours after the babies are born, too 
drugged and sleepy to rejoice the birth of their children. There is not much sense in suffering since 
drugs can be given for pain, itching, and other discomforts. The belief has long died that suffering 
here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. Suffering has lost its meaning. 
 
But with this change, also, fewer people really believe in life after death, in itself perhaps a denial 
of our mortality. Well, if we cannot anticipate life after death, then we have to consider death. If we 
are no longer rewarded in heaven for our suffering, then suffering becomes purposeless in itself. If 
we take part in church activities in order to socialize or to go to a dance, then we are deprived of the 
church's former purpose, namely, to give hope, a purpose in tragedies here on earth, and an attempt 
to understand and bring meaning to otherwise unacceptable painful occurrences in our life. 
 
Paradoxical as it may sound, while society has contributed to our denial of death, religion has lost 
many of its believers in a life after death, i.e., immortality, and thus has decreased the denial of 
death in that respect. In terms of the patient, this has been a poor exchange. While the religious 
denial, i.e., the belief in the meaning of suffering here on earth and reward in heaven after death, 
has offered hope and purpose, the denial of society has given neither hope nor purpose but has only 
increased our anxiety and contributed to our destructiveness and aggressiveness-to kill in order to 
avoid the reality and facing of our own death. 
 
A look into the future shows us a society in which more and more people are "kept alive" both with 
machines replacing vital organs and computers checking from time to time to see if some additional 
physiologic functioning's have to b e replaced by electronic equipment. Centers may be established 
in increasing numbers where all the technical data is collected and where a light may flash up when 
a patient expires in order to stop the equipment automatically. 
 
Other centers may enjoy more and more popularity where the deceased are quickly deep-frozen to 
be placed in a special building of low temperature, awaiting the day when science and technology 
have advanced enough to defrost them, to return them to life and back into society, which may be 
so frighteningly overpopulated that special committees may be needed to decide how many can be 
defrosted, just as there are committees now to decide who shall be the recipient of an available 
organ and who shall die. 
 
It may sound all very horrible and incredible. The sad truth, however, is that all this is happening 
already. There is no law in this country that prevents business-minded people from making money 
out of the fear of death, that denies opportunists the right 
 
to advertise and sell at high cost a promise for possible life after years of deep-freeze. These 
organizations exist already, and while we may laugh at people who ask whether a widow of a deep 
frozen person is entitled to accept social security or to remarry, the questions are all too serious to 

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be ignored. They actually show the fantastic degrees of denial that some people require in order to 
avoid facing death as a reality, and it seems time that people of all professions and religious 
backgrounds put their heads together before our society becomes so petrified that it has to destroy 
itself. 
 
Now that we have taken a look into the past with man's ability to face death with equanimity and a 
somewhat frightening glimpse into the future, let us come back to the present and ask ourselves 
very seriously what we as individuals can do about all this. It is clear that we cannot avoid the trend 
toward increasing numbers altogether. We live in a society of the mass man rather than the 
individual man. The classes in the medical schools will get bigger, whether we like it or not. The 
number of cars on the highways will increase. The number of people being kept alive will increase, 
if we consider only the advancement in cardiology and cardiac surgery. 
 
Also, we cannot go back in time. We cannot afford every child the learning experience of a simple 
life on a farm with its closeness to nature, the experience of birth and death in the natural 
surrounding of the child. Men of the churches may not even be successful in bringing many more 
people back to the belief in a life after death which would make dying more rewarding though 
through a form of denial of mortality in a sense. 
 
We cannot deny the existence of weapons of mass destruction nor can we go back in any way or 
sense in time. Science and technology will enable us to replace more vital organs, and the 
responsibility of questions concerning life and death, donors and recipients will increase manifoldly. 
Legal, moral, ethical, and psychological problems will be posed to the present and future 
generation which will decide questions of life and death in ever increasing numbers until these 
decisions, too, will probably be made by computers. 
 
(16) 
 
Though every man will attempt in his own way to postpone such questions and issues until he is 
forced to face them, he will only be able to change things if he can start to conceive of his own 
death. This cannot be done on a mass level. This cannot be done by computers. This has to be done 
by every human being alone. Each one of us has the need to avoid this issue, yet each one of us has 
to face it sooner or later. If all of us could make a start by contemplating the possibility of our own 
personal death, we may effect many things, most important of all the welfare of our patients, our 
families, and finally perhaps our nation.  If we could teach our students the value of science and 
technology simultaneously with the art and science of inter-human relationships, of human and 
total patient-care, it would be real progress. If science and technology are not to be misused to 
increase destructiveness, prolonging life rather than making it more human, if they could go hand 
in hand with freeing more time rather than less for individual person-to-person contacts, then we 
could really speak of a great society. 
 
Finally, we may achieve peace-our own inner peace as well as peace between nations-by facing and 
accepting the reality of our own death. 
 
An example of combined medical, scientific achievement and humanity is given in the following 
case of Mr. P.: 
 

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