A Conversation About Aging, Life and Death with Medical Anthropologist Sharon Kaufman
Sharon Kaufman
This is the end . . . My only friend, the end.
The Doors' Jim Morrison wasn't thinking about UCSF medical anthropologist Sharon Kaufman, PhD, when he wrote those lyrics more than 40 years ago. But Kaufman, the author of three books and dozens of articles on how modern medicine organizes itself around the big issues of aging, life and death, could make it her anthem — that is, if she had time to sing.
As it is, this self-described cartographer of life's loose ends has made dying and death — and the medical systems organized around these events — her full-time passion. In doing so, she has become both a researcher and a provocateur of the wards, asking questions of and following around nurses, doctors, social workers, patients, families and others in pursuit of the truth.
And what is that truth? First, be prepared, Kaufman says to baby boomers, the first of whom turn 62 in 2008. Talk to family members and close friends about how you see the end of life. Get real about aging too, she adds. Philosophizing over a glass of wine is not the same as being armed with the facts. The reason: Unless someone says "Stop" to all the medical intervention that prolongs life - which, she reminds us, is what our medical system is supposed to do — you might end up prolonging death instead.
Indeed, Kaufman turns an unflattering light on the gray zone Americans choose to ignore. In this gray zone, patients on feeding tubes and ventilators — supported by an expert care system and a network of nursing homes and special, hospital-like facilities — "live" on in a twilight that can last as long as 20 years. It is death brought to life, she says, and an end that will inevitably ensnare the unaware.
Alternative content
Related Links
- Medical Anthropologist Awarded Top Honor
- UCSF Today, Jan. 7, 2008
- And a Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life
- amazon.com
- The Ageless Self: Sources of Meaning in Late Life (Life Course Studies)
- amazon.com
- Death and Dying
- amazon.com