Mara Buchbinder

Public Lecture Title: Stories of Assisted Dying in America: New Narratives for Old Debates

Tuesday, February 11, 2025, 4:00-6:00 pm

Dr. Buchbinder is a medical anthropologist with broad interests in cultures of health, illness, and medicine in the United States. Her recent work focuses on how patients, families, and healthcare providers navigate social and ethical challenges resulting from changes in medical technology, law, and health policy. Dr. Buchbinder’s newest book, Scripting Death: Stories of Assisted Dying in America, chronicles two years of ethnographic research documenting the implementation of Vermont’s Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act. Weaving together stories collected from patients, caregivers, health care providers, activists, and legislators, it illustrates how they navigate medical aid-in-dying as a new medical frontier in the aftermath of legalization. Scripting Death explains how medical aid-in-dying works, what motivates people to pursue it, and ultimately, why upholding the “right to die” is very different from ensuring access to this life-ending procedure.