Death may not have changed, but dying is quite different from what it used to be, thanks to medical technologies that have extended life and made dying frequently a lingering process rather than a sudden event. People with failing kidneys can survive on dialysis for 20 or more years. People with incurable cancer can live for months or years with chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Victims of car accidents who would once have died of head trauma can now be kept alive by ventilators and feeding tubes. In the meantime, life-saving therapies for what were once sudden killers, like heart attack, mean that increasing numbers of people who end up with chronic complications or decline into dementia.