Blog
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Entries by Elizabeth van Wijngaarden
(10 entries)
Choosing to Die at the Age of 75: What a Dystopian Japanese Drama Tells us about Today’s Ageing Anxieties
A few weeks ago, I went to the cinema to watch the new Japanese movie PLAN 75. The movie recounts an intriguing story about Japan’s rapidly ageing population. With 30% of its population over ...
Why the Dominance of Choice-Talk in the Media Debate on Death and Dying in Late Life is Problematic
In many Western societies, the dominance of choice-talk in the public debate about good ageing and dying is clearly visible. Research in various Western jurisdictions, including a new Dutch study t...
Reimagining the relational value of death
Medical technology is one of the main drivers that is significantly changing the way we live towards the end of our lives and the way we die. In its recent report on the value of death, the Lancet ...
Should we be concerned about the role of choice in death and dying?
“Choice with regard to death and dying is a bourgeoisie thing. The bulk of people are just trying to keep themselves alive.” With this statement, Allan Kellehear, medical and publ...
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Undercover in a nursing home: What constitutes good care?
During the Christmas Holidays, on the advice of one of my colleagues, I watched a fascinating documentary The Mole Agent. In this idiosyncratic mix of spy film and observational documentary, 83-yea...
Should older people who are not severely ill have the right to ask for assisted dying?
This summer, on 17 July 2020, Dutch parliamentarian Pia Dijkstra submitted a controversial legislative proposal that would allow healthy older people to have assistance with dying if they cons...
Initiatives for ‘age-friendly environments’ need precarity-thinking
The main focus of my research is what one might call ‘the shadow side of old age’: living with dementia, tiredness of life, living towards death in modern times, and the question of how...
Choosing to die in anticipation of age-related deterioration: reflections on a complex debate
Across the whole Western world, there is increasing public debate about the exercise of individual control over the timing and manner of death. More and more people, especially in old age, seem to ...
The art of living with dementia
Dementia is one of the most feared diseases in our age. Most research is on how to combat the rise of dementia. In a Dutch project I am involved in, we rather try to understand what it means to liv...
Three reasons why we need narratives about suffering in old age
There is a collective aversion when it comes to facing the realities of old age, or so John Harris argued in The Guardian last February. Harris is, of course, not the first to point at a widespread...