How Doctors Die by Ken Murray (2012)

In How Doctors Die Ken Murray, a retired physician and an avid writer for Zocalo Public Square, explains how the average death of a doctor is different than that of most patients.  People never really think of how doctors die because they seem like a golden image of perfect health, but it is not true, they are simply like everyone else.  One difference is that they seem not to cling to life as often as the average patient.  This is the idea that Murray tries to delve into in this essay.  What Murray explains is that doctors understand modern medicine.  This does not mean that they know the best treatments and medicines to use, but instead they know its limitations.  Doctors often see the hell that patients go through clinging for life.  All of this experience leads most of them to decide not to go through the same process when their time comes.  This is what Dr. Murray is trying to offer up to people, mainly the average person, who is mature enough to consider the idea of death.  His whole reasoning is to share the idea that he knows well, that living through a machine is not really living.  In the essay, Murray uses the irony of the whole situation as a way of highlighting his point.  The fact that the most specialized medical personnel often seek less treatment than that of the average person is surprising.  That gets the reader thinking that if this is true then there must be a driving reason, something that they know that the average person doesn’t.  That basic idea is enough to show that he is not the only one that has this idea but that it is much more common, and that the people who should be the biggest experts, are doing the opposite of the common man.

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