From fake funerals to tests that tell you when you’ll die, this week’s news had it all. We also saw the touching story of a young boy who was given police honors and got a look at San Quentin’s death row. (Jump to news.)
Adam Ruins Everything takes on the Funeral Industry. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
12/30/2015–ksbw.com: It’s both a lonely and crowded world inside the country’s largest Death Row, where hundreds of condemned inmates, stripped of nearly every freedom, wait around to die. But for the more than 700 of the most notorious killers warehoused alone in cells in San Quentin State Prison, death likely won’t come at the end of a needle in the facility’s lethal-injection chamber… Read the full story
12/28/2015–consumer.healthday.com: The rules for judging when a patient is brain dead vary widely from hospital to hospital, despite the existence of national standards created to ensure accuracy, a new study has found. The American Academy of Neurology adopted a set of updated guidelines in 2010 for judging whether a person has lost all brain function and is being kept alive solely through hospital machinery, said lead researcher Dr. David Greer, a professor of neurology at the Yale School of Medicine, in New Haven, Conn… Read the full story
12/28/2015–bustle.com: There is only one thing in this life that’s certain, and that’s the fact that we will all die one day. (Happy Monday!) Though we all know that our mortality is imminent, we don’t really have firm data to show how or when we will die — but new research is suggesting that one weird test might predict when you’ll die. The test in question looks for antibodies in your saliva, the presence or absence of which might show whether you have an elevated risk of dying as compared to your peers. It might be useful… but at the same time, it might fall under the heading of “Things You Might Not Really Want To Know.” Proceed with caution… Read the full story
12/25/2015–reuters.com: Even though poor health is a known cause of unhappiness, and bad lifestyle choices often follow bad moods, misery alone probably won’t kill you, a U.K. study suggests. “We found that after accounting for poor health and other lifestyle choices, being happier doesn’t make you live longer, and being stressed doesn’t increase your risk of death,” lead study author Bette Liu of the University of New South Wales said by email… Read the full story
12/24/2015–khou.com: At 5 years old, Caleb Adams achieved his dream. “He was the finest police officer I’ve ever known. The bravest,” said his mother Amber. Adams was profoundly autistic and struggled with numerous medical conditions. Still, he admired the bravery he saw, whenever his father put on his uniform for the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office. “I’m going to be just like my dad – a police officer – in uniform,” Joseph Adams remembers hearing his son say. “My daddy is out there saving the world… Read the full story
12/24/2015–magazine.good.is: South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates among industrialized nations: Suicide is the fourth-most-common cause of death in the country. The situation is so dire that it has inspired an effort by mental health professionals called the “well-dying movement,” which resolves to help people appreciate life through a comprehension of death. In a well-dying course, participants stage their own fake funerals, lying down in a wooden coffin dressed in burial clothing, arms crossed on their chests, and contemplate their own mortality… Read the full story
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