Sherwin B. Nuland, ‘How We Die’ Author, Dies at 83

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/us/sherwin-b-nuland-author-who-challenged-concept-of-dignified-death-dies-at-83.html

Sherwin B. Nuland, ‘How We Die’ Author, Dies at 83
By DENISE GELLENE | MARCH 4, 2014

Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland, a surgeon and author who drew on more than 35 years in medicine and a childhood buffeted by illness in writing “How We Die,” an award-winning book that sought to dispel the notion of death with dignity and fueled a national conversation about end-of-life decisions, died on Monday at his home in Hamden, Conn. He was 83.

The cause was prostate cancer, his daughter Amelia Nuland said.

To Dr. Nuland, death was messy and frequently humiliating, and he believed that seeking the good death was pointless and an exercise in self-deception. He maintained that only an uncommon few, through a lucky confluence of circumstances, reached life’s end before the destructiveness of dying eroded their humanity.

“I have not seen much dignity in the process by which we die,” he wrote. “The quest to achieve true dignity fails when our bodies fail.”