He notes that except for the death toll in Mexico, most of the swine flu cases reported since the current epidemic struck have been relatively mild.

VOA: standard.2009.04.28

That authority ends at death, however, notes Franchelle Millender, an elder-law attorney in Columbia, S.C.

WSJ: Money Issues of Surviving Spouses

Benjamin notes that death has disappeared from contemporary life, safely shuffled away to the hospital, the morgue, the undertaker.

NEWYORKER: Total Recall

Jim Hoefler, of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, who is the author of a recent book on death in America, notes that boomers have a fear their parents never knew: that an impersonal health-care system may hook them up to an array of beeping machines rather than admit failure.

ECONOMIST: Doctor-assisted suicide