Abstract
Having learned how to bring some people back from death in some circumstances has caused Americans (and other peoples as well) to reconstruct
death. U.S. society, steeped in individualism, egalitarianism, and abhorrence
of the powerlessness embodied by dying and death, carries out an urgent
social obligation to provide this boon of attempted rescue to everyone. Having little else on the menu of health-care that can be offered to all comers,
the culture and the society are in the position of having to grant explicit
permission for dying and death in many cases. At the same time, society’s
complacent confidence that its agents’ ability to perform life-saving miracles
distracts the group from the inevitability of the death of its members. Meanwhile, the responsibility to grant or deny this permission is a great burden to
carry and to carry out, especially when its torturous machinations occur in
the very midst of rescue itself. Of course it would be preferable to push it off
somewhere else-to the patient’s body as having an irreversible condition;
to the patient’s wishes, however they might be expressed; or to the family
in the family hurdle. Having discharged this difficult responsibility, society
(through its hospital representatives) distances itself from the dying situation, often taking refuge in the easier-to-justify beneficence of universal
rescue.