On Our Own Terms: Bill Moyers on Dying

Four-part video series (four cassettes) of Bill Moyers 1999 program on PBS.

Reviewed by: Meg Wickes, Hospice Volunteer.

A second situation involves a Miami woman with ALS and asks the question: how far should one go to keep this terminal patient alive, especially as she is a firm believer that only God can take her at the end. Here Moyers emphasizes the importance of culture and belief in achieving an appropriate death. He refers to the Mexican Day of the Dead - a joyous occasion, sad that death in Western culture is such a "drag."

Program two (II), titled, "A Different Kind of Care," treats the development of palliative care as a new direction in medical training using Mt. Sinai's teaching program in how to emphasize comfort care and the Sloan Kettering Palliative Care Program both of which involve facing the obvious, but until recently ignored, fact that a patient is dying. He stresses the importance of completing an Advance Directive before one gets ill.

Program three (III), titled "A Death of One's Own" explores the ins and outs and ups and downs of purposefully ending one's life. The ramifications, moral, religious, practical as exemplified by following closely the horse farm owner whose ALS threatens only to worsen his time left. The doctor feels Hospice would not do enough. The difficulties of this path of self-administered death for his wife and care-giver is not glossed over.

The final program (IV), titled "A Time to Change" makes the case for new solutions and institutions that will allow and encourage achieving death on one's own terms. He makes a point that the poor and uninsured are usually deprived of what it would take to achieve "a good death." Most end up in bureaucratic situations and antiquated health systems.

Residential palliative care may be the answer for some even when the ideal is to stabilize sufficiently so that care may be undertaken with family members in the home. In some cases where one can't achieve "a good death" it may be possible, Moyers suggests, to stabilize the situation to allow "a better death."