Assignment: Death And Forensics

Assignment #2 - Death and Forensics

Death is a biological concept when a person or organism reaches the end of its life. Death is defined in different cultures around the world with ethical issues such as euthanasia, suicide, and assisted suicide. The Siberian Chukchi in the North Siberia, view death as a ritual sacrifice more so than suicide, where they have voluntary death, when a person requests to die often due to illness or old age (McGarry 2018), whereas in North America, death is considered as a medical failure because of how America revolutionized its medical technology (Anita Hannig 2017). In the article Talking About Death in America: An Anthropologist’s View by Anita Hannig from UNDark and Approaching Death: Improving Care at the

Within the last 100 years, the average American’s lifespan has nearly doubled, and infancy moved from routine to rare. They believe that the ‘dying process’ is being extended through the use of medical treatments. Medical treatments today reduced the death of pneumonia & influenza tuberculosis, meningitis, and diarrhoea; the leading causes of death in the United States in the 1900’s (McGarry, 2018). However, cancer, heart diseases, accidents, and diabetes mellitus are the leading causes of death in today’s society that do not have cures nor solutions that would prolong our lives (McGarry, 2018). Field and Cassel researched the attitudes of Americans toward dying and death and discovered that it is surprisingly limited. Americans avoid the thought of death of the psychological “death anxiety”, where a person view the reality and fear of eventually dying and over-react to the general cycle of life. They believe that any single dimension of anxiety fearing or concerning of death will escalate to multiple dimensions such as fear of pain and suffering, fear of the all life on earth coming to an end, and the fear of the unknown. Culture of death is limited in the United States because of the fear of the biological process and psychological