FOR A BETTER ENDING: Knowing What to Do to Die with Dignity

Most of us never talk about how we want to die. For a Better Ending is an invitation to start.

Written by Mexican bioethicist Asunción Álvarez del Río, this book gently but honestly explores what it means to face the end of life — what medicine can offer, what patients have the right to decide, and how we can support the people we love through their final days.

She covers the full range of end-of-life decisions — palliative care, sedation, the right to refuse treatment, euthanasia, medically assisted death — including the hardest cases: mental illness, children, dying alone. And she looks at how countries around the world are navigating these questions in law and in practice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Asunción Álvarez del Río holds a Master's degree in Psychology and a doctorate in Bioethics, both from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

She is a professor and researcher in the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at UNAM's School of Medicine. Her research focuses on two areas: death in medical practice, and the ethical dilemmas surrounding end-of-life decisions.

Her published works include Practice and Ethics of Euthanasia (FCE), A Farewell in Harmony (Grijalbo), co-authored with Elvira Cerón, Medical Decisions at the End of Life in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease (Fontamara), co-authored with Isaac González and Joaquín Gutiérrez, and For a Better Ending (Palabras y Plumas Editores).[Books in Spanish]

She is a Level II member of Mexico's National System of Researchers and a member of the National Academy of Medicine of Mexico. She served as President of El Colegio de Bioética, A.C. from 2021 to 2024. She currently serves as President of Libertad para Morir, A.C. (Freedom to Die) and of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies.

At its heart, the book holds one simple idea: the person who lived a life should have a say in how it ends.