"The older ones at the time of death had a lot more calcification than the younger ones, " said Randall Thompson, a cardiologist at Saint Luke's Mid-America Heart Institute, Kansas City, Mo.

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As we watched these goings-on, my long-time collaborator Dr. Myron Cohen, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, likened it to situtions where physicians ask families to make life and death decisions for loved-ones on the basis of the best expert evidence available at the time.

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It is far easier to overlook the death of loved ones when you don't have to stare across the holiday table at their empty places.

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