The Welcome Visitor

<p>Death is a subject modern society shies away from. Even doctors avoid the word. But if we regard death as a failure in our desire to prolong life, can we ever arrive at a humane approach to those whose lives have lost meaning? Are we keeping people alive simply because we can?<br>Here, John Humphrys and his co-author Dr Sarah Jarvis take a wider look at how our attitudes to death have changed as doctors have learned how to prolong life beyond anything that could have been imagined only a few generations ago, and confront one of the great challenges facing the western world today.<br>There are no easy answers but the first step must surely be to accept that death can be as welcome as it is inevitable.</p>