Dying Alone and Undiscovered - Jon Minton

Please note that although we normally meet on the first Monday of the month, this meeting will be on Monday 8 January 2024.

Dying Alone and Undiscovered

“Many people would be shocked that someone can lie dead at home for days, weeks or even longer, without anyone raising an alarm among the community they live in,” Dr Estrin-Serlui.

However, research* into data from England and Wales shows an increase in the number of people whose bodies are discovered too late to be able to attribute a cause of death – and not just the elderly. Dr Jonathan Minton, a member of the research team, will talk about this research. He’ll argue that a lot of things have to have gone wrong for this to be the case, and suggest that broader issues connected to social isolation and loneliness have become more acute in less than a generation. He’ll also discuss some of the origins of the research, press coverage and social media engagement, and the ways that some of the findings were as expected, but others were not.
* Research by Hiam, L., Estrin-Serlui, T., Dorling, D., McKee, M. and Minton, J. (2023)

You can read the article, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, at: https://www.dannydorling.org/?page_id=9943

The meeting will be chaired by Cathy Crawford.

Please note that this is an online only meeting via Zoom. Once you RSVP, you will be provided with the link to the meeting. Just click on this link when it is time to join the meeting. You can also join the meeting using a Zoom account and the following details:
Meeting ID: 744 950 4423
Passcode: Humanists

We are arranging a "Humanist Pub Night" in the back room of The Kenilworth on Wednesday 10 January from 7pm onwards to allow people to meet together informally and discuss this topic. See separate Meetup for full details.