How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)
archive.cancerworld.net
archive.cancerworld.net
Why did she recover after she was switched to hospice care? The best explanation I have is that in the hospital, her access to opioids had been limited. Letting a patient have too much can be risky. But in the hospice, where death is regarded as impending, those risks don't matter and she could have as much as she needed to actually be comfortable. And not suffering, not being in pain was maybe what allowed her to begin to heal.
I don't think exactly that her doctors were wrong in believing that her death was imminent and that a hospice was the right place for her. But what if we created a healthcare system where clinging to life is so exhausting for the patient that embracing the inevitability of death is the most healing option?
I think that is somewhat well known? I don't have good references about humans, but veterinarian James Alfred Wight (wrote books as James Herriot) has written about it, how lost cause lamb "miraculously" recovered after big dose pain killer (sorry, don't remember details, only his thoughs, how getting rest from pain helps).
this probably have to do with movement (which applies to other animals and humans) if they feel pain they don't move, that slows down the blood circulation and the healing process.
She initially went down-hill after she was weaned off the steroids she had been on during treatment for a benign brain tumour. Obviously the tumour and the radiotherapy didn't help things, but her health dropped off a cliff when the steroids stopped, she lost all her strength. I often wonder if she'd still be around now if they had just kept her on them and worked on her mobility.
Keep moving. You don't have to run marathons or go to the gym for it to have a positive effect.
This is the crux of it. It's hard to predict exactly when people will die. Spend enough time with palliative care physicians and the phrase "if I had a crystal ball" is burned into your memory
I was in the hospital 5 weeks at the end of 2020, and I was very aware of all the extra challenges that it brought to healing. Poor sleep due to lights/noise/interruptions, sleeping with a strange roommate who had their own sleep disruptions. Low quality food with few options, and very little fresh fruits and vegetables. On top of constant pain, boredom fear and isolation (despite all the people around).
I understand the hospitals are resource constrained, and have reasons for many of the things they do, but at the same time I feel like rest, nutrition and psychological elements are largely ignored when designing today’s hospital experiences.
For what it’s worth this was in Canada, so at least I didn’t have financial stresses in addition, but perhaps there are other countries more human in their approach to care.
Whatever else a hospital is, it is typically not a place that is designed for rest and recuperation and overall patient wellness. They want to push their curatives on you as quickly as possible and without a lot of regard for your mental well being, so that they can get you out quickly and move on to the next patient. Think of it more like a MASH unit, where you’re only supposed to be there for a short period of time before they stabilize you and ship you out somewhere else.
I grew up spending a great deal of my life in hospitals, because of my dad and his medical problems. And then my mom and her medical problems. But until recently, I never really understood things from their perspective. I hope I don’t develop hospital psychosis like my dad did, but I am definitely very wary of checking into a hospital unless there is no choice.
It is that doctor's are familiar with death.
Ordinary people aren't as familiar with death, and don't have a wide range of responses to it because society hides it and pretends it doesn't exist.
The main place regular people encounter death is on the news as a statistic of war and crime. Then when it visits their family and friends, they are unprepared, except for what they know of death, which is a calamity.
Sitcoms don't include death because they exist to take your mind off work, and provide a platform for advertising consumer goods.
Friends and acquaintances don't often talk about death in expansive terms. They only offer a cliche one liner - sorry for your loss - because that's the only response they've learnt. It's a well intentioned sentiment, and also one that's constrained by a fear of death that is unwarranted.
That's a shame because death is an expansive part of life. It's the point at which a life becomes whole, and we can see someone in their entirety. Death, along with birth, is the context for life.
It's going to happen to all of us, no matter how we try to deny it or hide it. Doctors know this and so they let it in. They do this before life descends into the shadows.
Remembering that you'll die someday, and not just some distant day far away but literally any day or moment gives a good perspective to everything in your life and makes you focus on things that truly matters.
Curiously, from "inshallah" Spanish got the word "ojalá", a very common term for expressing hope of something happening (and with no religious or any other "deep" connotation anymore; just like you'd use "I hope").
But I'm an atheist, and firmly believe that this is all we get, and death really is the end of everything for us. I'm not sure I'd be so accepting if I was facing some kind of afterlife. Even ignoring the possibility of an eternity being tortured in heck, I'm much happier with the thought of everything just stopping than with the thought of it somehow continuing on another level.
It's interesting, how our fear of death drives us. Yet (as gp says) we never talk about it.
And I understand now why some people say it's terrifying. Between decades of suffering or eternity of nothing, what would you choose?
Don't half ass the answer, go on a bridge with a heavy backpack zip tied to yourself, put a loaded gun to your head or have a fistful of TCA pills in your hand, whatever, then answer it.
I don't want to live, but I ain't keen on dying either, to paraphrase Robbie Williams.
I really wouldn't mind being killed by something out of my control, though.
If you're seriously contemplating it, because life is suffering, know that it's not always like that. This too shall pass. There are good times too. My life now is something I could not have imagined achieving back when I was depressed and couldn't see any future for myself. Life is also randomly wonderful. I'm incredibly grateful to my past self for struggling on through, not ending it, and getting us to here. Here is good.
Of course, this too shall pass. Enjoying the good times in full is important, because they won't last. I hope I have the courage to face my next set of bad times with the same fortitude as my past self faced them.
And the phrase "if we're alive", is used for longer time periods like next year or more.
I think about my own death, or some disability, at about the same frequency.
What would I do if I lost my hearing, or my sight.
It is one of the reasons I try to live this life, instead of waiting for some future rewards in an uncertain afterlife.
Yes, I am not religious, and I think being religious has little to do with thinking about death. Death is the great equalizer.
I relate to this so much. I had a period of staring my potential death in the face and there is nothing in modern society that prepares you for that. I was completely rudderless for a while because I had literally no social context in which death could be faced without making people intensely uncomfortable.
There's many things I think our society is pretty crap at, but the subject of death in general has to be one of the worst offenders by far. We shouldn't be sweeping death under the carpet as a taboo subject and pretending it doesn't exist, it should be something people talk about. Death is the one thing that unites us all, it would be a far less unpleasant thing to face if people could have a sensible conversation about it without fear or grimaces.
If you want to know about how hard life can get after the death of someone, I cannot recommend Blue by Kieslowsky enough.
Ricky Gervais isn't afraid of it...Have you seen After Life?
UK sitcoms beg to differ - just look at Coronation Street or Eastenders - they cover pretty much every category of death you can think of (except, I suppose, by wildlife.)
edit: for the remarkably special downvoters (stay classy HN) - that's the type of lung cancer my mother died from, in about 20 months time. You generally can't surgically remove small cell lung cancer. It was particularly brutal, with endless treatment attempts that were physically grueling and minimally effective. It's a highly aggressive cancer with a very low survival rate and few good treatment options. Accordingly, having watched her go through that, I can very much relate to what the parent said.
In the end, she went into the bathroom, threw up a lot of blood, and never woke up. They didn’t do an autopsy, but the assumption was that the cancer had just gotten too widely distributed throughout her system.
But, since she had spent much of her adult life helping my dad with one or the other of his medical problems, and she had been an HR director at Norman Regional Hospital for many years, she did focus on trying to keep the best quality of life that she could, right up to the end.
The irony was that she had quit smoking thirty years earlier. It was her sister that did her in. Since the sister was in stage 4 of stomach cancer, they let her smoke in her hospital room. And my mom was the primary caregiver who slept in that room and was there pretty much 24x7. So, her second-hand smoke is what got my mom.
Definitely focus on quality of life. Whatever you’ve got left, you should try to make those your best days, weeks, months, or years yet.
Odds of her outcome were something like 5%. She's well aware of how lucky she is.
"Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande talks about this. He mentions Stephen Gould's essay, "The Median Isn't The Message," in which Gould says:
> For most situations, however, I prefer the more martial view that death is the ultimate enemy—and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light.
Which is an idea I think meshes very well with the strategy of chasing low probability , high reward outcomes. Gawande's response makes a lot of sense to me personally:
> There is almost always a long tail of possibility, however thin. What's wrong with looking for it? Nothing, it seems to me, unless it means we have failed to prepare for the outcome that's vastly more probable. The problem is that we have built our medical system and culture around the long tail. We've created a multitrillion-dollar edifice for dispensing the medical equivalent of lottery tickets—and have only the rudiments of a system to prepare patients for the near certainly that those tickets will not win. Hope is not a plan, but hope is our plan.
He also talks about several patients he treated through the years who suffered through futile treatments while trying to become one of the lucky ones and lost what quality of life they might have had in their dwindling time.
I'm glad your sister was one of the lucky ones who had a good outcome as opposed to going through the major surgery and chemo and being one of the 95%. It also seems to me that a different mindset in these sort of situations that educate patients on palliative options and try to make their remaining time as good as it can be would reduce much unnecessary suffering.
Look at any cancer drug trial and there is a massive spread in outcomes. Some people take a drug and die with horrible side effects in 2 months, others live 10 years with mild side effects.
With all the talk about 'controlling our bodies' in terms of abortion, and I can see both sides of that one, your own life is the one thing you really own. To have that control taken away is the worst kind of insult by the state.
I understand that different health authorities here have different policies on the registration and application of such "living wills". I have no confidence that if I get sick in the wrong place, my statement will even be noticed, let alone respected. Also, there's no reason why a paramedic coming to my home would know to look in my desk-drawer (I live on my own), and so discover that I don't want any CPR, ever.
And ultimately, these living wills are advisory only; medics can't be sued for ignoring them.
It's a bloody mess. I really hope I don't ever get demented.
Sir T Pratchett wrote extensively about being on the wrong end of dementia. He didn't have much to say about abortion when he was dealing with cognitive decline.
Plus, the people that need this are (quite obviously) unable to make this happen on their own. So this comes with the additional moral qualms of whether this is really what the wanted and if their mental state clear enough to make a decision like this.
Lastly, not killing these people is the "safe choice" - you're not getting sued for not killing a person. In the end, it probably boils down to this.
Once you open the flood gates, you will have plenty who kill themselves who otherwise wouldn't with just a little bit of extra support.
This isn't directed at you, but I have had countless conversations about this very topic. The detriments are greatly overstated. I've found usually people are talking of these things outside looking in in an ideological vacuum, and not an experiential one.
Let's take societal outcomes for african americans, as an example. What people don't realize is, when people speak of abortions in a vaccuum (and lets be frank -- it's usually white liberals who champion it the hardest), the elephant in the room is with african american women carry out the disproportionate volume of abortions, and the the overwhelming majority of Planned Parenthood locations being located in poor and black neighborhoods. There is a large argument now that is catching on in many african american communities that maybe if we had the estimated 11 million more black babies born in this country, black representation would be much better off in all matters of the socioeconomic and political spheres, resulting in better lives overall for the general population. In 2015, in association with National Black Pro-Life Coalition, Protecting Black Life, and National Black Pro-Life Union met with CURE to deliver a congressional report detailing all of these facts, and making the strong case that the economic and societal impact of all the abortions in the black community is far greater. I encourage everyone to read it: https://www.congress.gov/115/meeting/house/106562/witnesses/...
There are welfare states such as scandinavian ones where the financial help for having children and/or being a single mother is very generous.
A single mother with 6 children can receive financial aid to the equivalent of a senior software engineer salary without having to work at all. Source: https://www.expressen.se/gt/gt-granskar/shukri-hade-fatt-lik...
Even with these levels of financial support, abortions are common - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Sweden#Trends
Putting a newborn up for adoption is different, it doesn't have either of those problems. There are 2 million families in the US waiting to adopt a newborn.
Is there a scientific reason for that idea? I don't see how implantation can really be considered a transition from potential human to human. I think with enough scientific advances a human could be raised entirely outside the womb, and in that case there would be no implantation.
(Implantation itself doesn't feel like the transition point either, but it's just the last obvious discrete step before the continuous progression all the way to birth.)
It seems strange to say that our current definition is not the correct long-term definition, but we'll keep using the current one. To me that's basically saying our current definition of human is wrong, and I don't see why it's acceptable to use a wrong definition.
I'm not sure it avoids the majority since a decent amount of folks have the knowledge and tools to simply avoid the pregnancy in the first place, but it does lower it.
That's why there's so much interest in defining limits around abortions. Late term abortions are pretty much described as horrific by the vast majority. There should be room for political agreement here.
That said, I don't think there will be political agreement because it's not 100% about the rules around abortions anyway. It's a political instrument at this point. Either side is trying to win, not do what's right, and that's how things have gotten so extreme.
To be clear, you are right that a late term abortion is pretty horrific. They're also -traumatic-. No one is -intentionally- waiting around to get an abortion; there isn't room for political argument here because anyone who finds themselves pregnant at a late stage and doesn't want to be is already in the case of "reasonable exception". A medical complication, a change in financial status to where she can't support it (when before she thought she could), etc.
No one is finding out they're pregnant in the first trimester, and then just can't make up their mind until the third, and we as a society need to set a date she has to make up her mind, or force her to keep it against her will. That's a made up justification, and as we continue to see, the same forces that make that justification don't even stop there.
>But data suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1363/4521013
>“[t]here aren’t good data on how often later abortions are for medical reasons.”
>“Based on limited research and discussions with researchers in the field, Dr. Foster believes that abortions for fetal anomaly ‘make up a small minority of later abortion’ and that those for life endangerment are even harder to characterize,” the report stated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/06/tough-qu...
Of course that doesn't invalidate the findings; but it is a a fairly small number of events they're talking about here, that's all.
The general way I interpret the meaning of parentheses is that it's a part of the sentence that provides extra information, but the sentence would still be correct if it was removed.
I think you're misunderstanding how the sentence I quoted relates to the study. The study I linked to actually only studied women who had abortions unrelated to fetal anomalies or life endangerment. So none of the 56% who declined to participate in the study nor any of the 44% who accepted to participate in it had abortions related to fetal anomalies or life endangerment.
The quote I quoted was basically an offhand remark that the paper made to justify its relevance, not backed up by evidence in the paper, but instead backed up by a citation to a different paper that I found hard to understand in a quick skim.
What you mean by that? There is extremely high demand to adopt newborns, which is why parents desperate for children adopt from other countries. There is currently a waiting list of 2 million families willing to adopt newborns.
Children in foster care are different story - people are much less willing to adopt older kids.
Maybe finish adopting all those kids who exist and need families right now, regardless of where they’re from, rather than force people to give birth to more babies that need adoption.
https://adoptionnetwork.com/types-of-adoption-options/domest...
> Domestic – If you are looking to adopt a newborn or young infant, you are looking at a domestic adoption. It’s that simple.
> more babies that need adoption.
That's a strange way of looking at it. When you say it like that, it sounds as if a new baby will create an imbalance between supply and demand. There's 2 million families waiting to adopt a newborn, so a new baby will help balance that, not imbalance it.
Fertility is dropping, so I wonder if there will be an even higher demand for newborns in the future.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/reel/video/p09k7qw5/how-modern-life-is...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/26/falling-sper...
My parents looked into adopting from another country - it was a program they were introduced to through church. It cost $20,000 plus travel... in the 1990s.
But then here you come with the ~93% of reasons that boil down to convenience. It's more convenient to murder this baby than to not murder it so murder it is.
There is a very important and overlooked 7% of abortions that are medically related that save the whole concept of legal abortion for me. Mothers who want babies but, because literally everything in biology can go wrong in ways that make abortion the only humane option, those poor women can't. And they don't need police investigating their terminations in the middle of unimaginable grief.
It is absolutely not convenience. To flip it another way, these are often homes you would never allow to adopt a baby, or homes where the child is inevitably taken by child services due to abuse or incapacity of the parent(s). Then they end up in foster care, far too late to be adopted by the nice well-to-do family with a white picket fence, and they bounce around the foster system.
The foster system can't even handle all the kids that aren't adopted, and some kids end up too broken to stay in care. What happens then? At some point they just throw a bunch of broken kids into a shitty house together and have a child services worker come check in on them every day or so.
Although the numbers are a bit different here, maybe he’s referencing a newer data set. Still it’s shocking:
> non-Hispanic Black women had the highest abortion rate (21.2 abortions per 1,000 women) and ratio (335 abortions per 1,000 live births)
Many would disagree with that characterization.
Your concern may be genuine but it is misplaced.
At the stages of development when most abortions are performed, the life that is being ended is much less of a life than that of a cow, or pig, or chicken, or even fish, that ends up being killed for food.
If people truly believe that ending abortion is a moral and ethical issue, then the only consistent stance is to also be vegan and push for laws requiring everyone else be vegan.
...for nothing. The right to abortion isn't premised on any of those, in general. The only one that is particularly relevant as a justification is protecting the life of the mother, and that mostly has to do with abortions later in pregnancy, Cobstitutionally.
Otherwise, the justification of abortion is bodily autonomy.
It's not like becoming pregnant is "being forced to give birth";
if it is the distinction is meaningless since not allowing <x> is forcing you to not do <x>, and forcing you to do <x> is disallowing you to not do <x>.
But you are right. This distinction is meaningless by itself.
What actually has meaning is if what we are forcing/forbidding you to do with your body puts your health and life at risk for some other benefit, for example for benefit of a single new other human.
Forcing someone to carry pregnancy to term to save the life of this new human is like forcing someone to giva a kidney to save some other person's life.
It's commendable but it shouldn't be obligatory.
And being responsible for getting pregnant shouldn't be automatically punished with being forced to risk your health and life for benefit of human that is not you. Unless pregnancy is a crime there should be no punishment at all. Let alone the corporal punisment.
Why not? Those are the stakes of sex and we all know it going in. I'm a man, but I know that if I accidentally get a woman pregnant one of the consequences will be being forced to monetarily support the resulting child. She knows going in that pregnancy is a potential consequence. Neither of us is "innocent" here, we both took a gamble and lost. The question is, if one believes that a fetus is a person with a right to life, do we not also believe that those who knowingly engaged in its creation have a responsibility towards it?
> Unless pregnancy is a crime there should be no punishment at all. Let alone the corporal punisment.
Having children is not a crime, yet we routinely force people to be responsible for their children. One could say that the crime is being irresponsible, but then one could just as easily say the same about terminating a pregnancy.
Because getting pregnant is not a crime so it shouldn't be punished.
> Those are the stakes of sex and we all know it going in.
You can say that about crimes as well. Knowing the stakes doesn't mean that something that follows is not a punishment. And we should be punishing only crimes. And we shouldn't be using corporal punishments at all.
> I'm a man, but I know that if I accidentally get a woman pregnant one of the consequences will be being forced to monetarily support the resulting child.
That's a horrible idea too unless you are voluntarily choosing to do it.
> Neither of us is "innocent" here, we both took a gamble and lost.
That doesn't mean either of you should suffer any punishment.
> The question is, if one believes that a fetus is a person with a right to life, do we not also believe that those who knowingly engaged in its creation have a responsibility towards it?
Even if you believe a fetus is as much of a person as adult human you still can't compel other human to risk her health and life for that person even if not risking it means this person dies. Even if she's responsible for giving this human life.
Human that needs a kidney also has the right to live but you can't ensure that right is fulfilled by taking involuntarily kidneys of other people.
What's more, even if your child needs a kidney to survive you are not obliged to provide it and punished for not doing so.
An yet if somebody needs a uterus (and the rest of your body with all it's fragile systems) you are forced to provide it if it's your kid.
> Having children is not a crime, yet we routinely force people to be responsible for their children. One could say that the crime is being irresponsible, but then one could just as easily say the same about terminating a pregnancy.
When the child is born, you don't have to take it with you from the hospital. If you did, you voluntarily assumed the rights of a parent with all the responsibilities. When you neglect a child you are punished for violation of this voluntary agreement.
You don't voluntarily agree to getting pregnant and giving birth unless you are planning it and wanting it. Having sex is not acceptance of being forced to deliver a child. Acceptance could be assumed if having children was the only reason people have sex. But people use sex as communication and bonding tool.
When people engage in sports they don't voluntarily agree to being injured or injuring others, they don't plan for or want it, yet these things are known risks of playing sports.
I'm saying that having sex, something that no one needs to do to survive, is acceptance of the risk of becoming pregnant[0], the same way that playing a sport is acceptance of the risk of becoming injured. If people choose to engage in activity with a known risk of a certain outcome, is that outcome not their responsibility should it occur?
> When the child is born, you don't have to take it with you from the hospital. If you did, you voluntarily assumed the rights of a parent with all the responsibilities. When you neglect a child you are punished for violation of this voluntary agreement.
Given that sex is a voluntary act with known risks, one that no one forced you to engage in, I do not think that it is unreasonable to apply the same standard: you have assumed the responsibilities of pregnancy and can, conceptually[1], be punished for violation of that responsibility.
[0] For the sake of brevity it should be assumed that by "becoming pregnant" I am referring to the state of both sexes as regards their potential future state of parenthood.
[1] I don't necessarily agree with doing so, I just don't think the issue is nearly as neat and tidy as people make it out to be.
Is a person legally responsible for the injury if he engages in skydiving but then gets injured because the pilot of his plane made a mistake or manufacturer technician of his plane didn't prepare it correctly?
Is a person walking at night legally responsible for getting mugged, because there's a known risk of getting mugged?
Is the responsibility for any action with known risk solely on the person undertaking the action?
And if this person is legally defined to be responsible should this person and only this person be corporeally punished for engaging with this risky action when it results in undesirable outcome for herself?
Since father is also equally responsible why not take out one of his organs he can live without as a punishment for the undesirable outcome? Or why not give him 100 lashes or something?
Why corporal punishment for a women but just a fine for a man?
Refusing women abortion is similarly barbaric. We just don't notice it.
I don't see how that tracks. You appear to be saying "if birth control fails", but birth control is known to be less than 100% effective the same way protective sports equipment is. Arguably you have a point if the birth control in question is defective.
> Is a person walking at night legally responsible for getting mugged, because there's a known risk of getting mugged?
> Is the responsibility for any action with known risk solely on the person undertaking the action?
So the sperm and egg are committing a crime now? They are not conscious actors, they don't have responsibility.
> Since father is also equally responsible why not take out one of his organs he can live without as a punishment for the undesirable outcome?
> Why corporal punishment for a women but just a fine for a man?
We already have child support to extract responsibility, in some form, from the father. I think it would be fair to say that money is not nearly as big a deal as the pregnancy, so yeah maybe there should be a different form of responsibility enforced. Taking an organ doesn't really accomplish anything though, because the purpose isn't to punish but to support the child and taking an organ does nothing for that.
> Refusing women abortion is similarly barbaric. We just don't notice it.
I don't agree. While I'm certainly uncomfortable with the idea of forcing people to endure pregnancy and its consequences against their will, if one takes the position that fetuses are people and deserve the same human rights as everyone else, and quite a lot of people do (though for the record I lean toward not agreeing on this), then I don't think the issue is quite as straight-forward as saying that the mother (or father for that matter, but obviously his situation is different) bears no responsibility towards the fetus.
I never claimed that. If anything, I am claiming that there's no responsibility that needs to be assigned to anyone because it's not a reprehensible act. And the only responsibility there is here, is the one that women voluntarily might or might not take upon herself.
> Taking an organ doesn't really accomplish anything though, because the purpose isn't to punish but to support the child and taking an organ does nothing for that.
You may always use that organ to help someone else in exchange for support for the child. Body of the woman is lawfully coerced to sustain harm and we don't do the same with man.
> I don't think the issue is quite as straight-forward as saying that the mother (or father for that matter, but obviously his situation is different) bears no responsibility towards the fetus.
Even if there's a responsibility. Even if we consider getting conceived the worst thing two humans can do to another it doesn't mean that is should be corporeally punished.
We shouldn't (and in almost all cases we don't) legally force people to risk their health and life to help someone else, even to save someone else's life. No matter how much responsibility the person is burdened with. We don't even take the kidneys of serial killers, even though the responsibility that they brought upon themselves is orders of magnitude larger than any other.
> getting pregnant is not a crime
neither is signing a contract, but you can be penalised for breaking one. Neither is joining the army, but you can be punished for deserting. You are suggesting that if it's not a crime to take on a responsibility, you can't be punished for betraying it - that doesn't follow to me.
> you don't have to take it with you from the hospital. If you did, you voluntarily assumed the rights of a parent
why don't you assume the potential consequence of bringing a pregnancy to full term by voluntarily having sex, and not aborting in early terms?
> you still can't compel other human to risk her health and life
No, but you can penalise them. Can you not penalise members of the army for deserting? Yes, because they took on that responsibility. Who takes on the responsibility for a strangers kidney problems?
> if your child needs a kidney to survive you are not obliged to provide it
you aren't responsible for such a condition.
> yet if somebody needs a uterus
because you put them there? Can I lock you in a cage and claim no responsibility in getting you out?
I'm suggesting the exactly opposite. That by having sex and getting pregnant you don't enter any contract and you don't automatically agree to take any responsibility. You can be punished for violating terms of something you voluntarily agreed to.
> why don't you assume the potential consequence of bringing a pregnancy to full term by voluntarily having sex, and not aborting in early terms?
If you made a voluntary decision to not abort in early terms then probably we can assume that.
>> if your child needs a kidney to survive you are not obliged to provide it > you aren't responsible for such a condition.
You might be. This might be a genetic birth defect (which is your responsibility for having sex by your count because it's one of the possible outcomes you are assumed to accept). Or you might have damaged you kid kidney with bad diet or herbal remedies or just beating the kid. And you still wouldn't be obliged to provide your kidney as a replacement. The point is, the law should never require of you the piece of your body.
> because you put them there? Can I lock you in a cage and claim no responsibility in getting you out?
Absolutely. However you'll be fully responsible for putting me there, if it was illegal.
I don't think this reasoning tracks. Let's say you're in a bar and get into a heated argument with another person and you decide to "take it outside", as it were. You don't have to fight this person, no one is making you, you both decided to engage in the activity. Now one of you ends up severely injured or maybe even dead, not because that was the intention but because of bad luck.
You agreed to the fight, with the known probability of significant bodily harm even though neither party desired that outcome. Do either of you have any responsibility for that outcome?
> The point is, the law should never require of you the piece of your body.
I think this is your strongest argument, because I honestly cannot think of a reason the state should be allowed to do that and the only counter argument I can muster is that there's currently no other way to bring a fetus to term, which I feel is a weak justification.
Sure. But does that mean that as a punishment we should break your legs or take a kidney out of each of you?
If conceiving an unwanted child is harm, then just make mother and father pay a fine and give mother an abortion. Don't punish her with damage to her health.
And if conceiving an unwanted child is not a harm, them do the same just without any punishment.
> I think this is your strongest argument, because I honestly cannot think of a reason the state should be allowed to do that and the only counter argument I can muster is that there's currently no other way to bring a fetus to term, which I feel is a weak justification.
That's my main point, that I think is the strongest argument in existence for any right to choice of abortion, even limited. Since I got this point across I'm perfectly happy to end this thread at that. Thank you.
> then probably we can assume that
then penalise non-medical late-term abortions?
> This might be a genetic birth defect (which is your responsibility for having sex by your count because it's one of the possible outcomes you are assumed to accept)
but acting in good faith, there's no formal responsibility to pass on good genes. An interesting concept, but moot in modern society. Also, it doesn't follow that "donating a kidney" fixes the issue in the same way "not aborting" would.
> or just beating the kid
In which case you would obviously be punished.
> you still wouldn't be obliged to provide your kidney as a replacement
My original comments agree this is true, but also state it doesn't mean you can't be punished/penalised.
> the law should never require of you the piece of your body
Then can I state your doctors can never retrieve/tamper with a piece of someone else's body, even if it exists inside your womb?
> However you'll be fully responsible for putting me there, if it was illegal
And I where a jailer who put you in there legally, but illegally left you there to rot? The legality of the first act would not change my initial responsibility to let you out.
it doesnt matter that the women entered the pregnancy knowing the consequences, she is allowed to revoke the babies privilege to use her body whenever she wants.
When did that baby consent to being conceived?
By name, no. It’s a popular term which I think maps pretty well to a large and significant subset of “privacy” law under the Supreme Court’s 5th (as applies to the federal government) and 14th (as applies to the States) Amendment “due process” jurisprudence.
> What's the justification for the drugs laws then?
Arguably, none. The only case which has reached the Supreme Court in which I ama aware of the relevant Constitutional argument was kind-of considered against the Controlled Substances Act used it as an argument in the lower courts for Constitutional avoidance (a doctrine under which the courts read ambiguity in laws to favor an interpretation which does not violate the Constitution), and the Court refused to apply it because the law was not ambiguously crafted so as to permit the reading preferred, even if it was Cobstitutionally necessary; because invalidity of the law itself was not argued at the lower court, the Supreme Court declined to consider it for the first time on appeal. United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, 532 U.S. 483 (2001).
then why do so many pro-choicers also hate vaxxers? And please don't say "that's different, it affects other people!"
Preempting the flaw in your strawman doesn’t invalidate it. A woman choosing to abort a pregnancy has no bearing on anyone but her. In contrast, the anti-vaccine crowd both directly, and indirectly, contribute to the propagation of disease.
Your right to bodily autonomy stops at society’s doorstep, which is broadly agreeing that the unvaccinated don’t get to participate in the non-essential aspects of society, otherwise furthering the risk to everyone else without reason.
Isn't the baby also affected by that choice?
Legally, zygotes, embryos, and fetuses (like spermatazoa and ova, and unlike babies which are not involved in this) are not persons.
A zygote, an embryo, and a fetus are genetically fully human, and are distinct individuals from the mother. So saying "has no bearing on anyone but [the mother]" is... legally correct, but morally much more grey. And saying "it only affects one person" is also pre-empting the objection to the strawman.
Define “genetically fully human” and “distinct individuals” and provide an argument as to why each is ethically relevant.
"Distinct individual": Genetically different from the parent, and not just different with a transcription error.
Why it's relevant: Because "it's her body" and "it affects nobody else" aren't relevant arguments when it's not just her body, when there's another individual there. Now we have to have a real moral/ethical discussion, and we can't short-circuit it with dismissive strawmen.
But I'm fairly sure you knew all of that. I suspect that you just want to keep using the strawmen to avoid having the actual ethical/moral discussion.
> like spermatazoa and ova, and unlike babies which are not involved in this
Do mean some fetuses are people aka babies, or all fetuses are distinct from babies and hence not persons.
Er, why not? The fact that it affects what is legally a non-person entity in whom the State has a legitimate interest is why abortion rights have different parameters later in pregnancy, so why wouldn't it be the consistent that vaccination having public health impacts that affect the life and health of other actual people is relevant?
At what point is a person a person? "at birth" seems arbitrary.
All lines dividing up creation into named categories and entities are arbitrary.
That one is arbitrary is not an argument against it and in favor of a different (and equally arbitrary) one.
> That one is arbitrary is not an argument against it and in favor of a different (and equally arbitrary) one.
True, but that's not my aim. I am instead attacking the notion of personhood, which was a dependency of your own argument, not mine. If there are no meaningful indicators of personhood, the only way to avoid aborting a person is to set a limit at a point where a foetus is still likely to be a non-person, because detailed gauges of personhood are otherwise unavailable.
I think a better direction for this argument would be to burden you with the question; why aren't we allowed to terminate once a child is born? pre-empting the argument "but then there are no health risks / autonomy considerations" - does that mean all abortions are done for purely health-risk reasons?
How so? We don't have to create a system in which it is legal to shoot someone in the head and then claim they asked you to do it. Have it be a medical procedure that must be done in a hospital by government certified doctors. You can even require a psych evaluation before it becomes an option.
I can understand there being some gray area in which it isn't clear that the person has all their faculties to the point they can request it, but that shouldn't stop us from creating a system that works for all the obvious cases.
Incentives are different too. Outside of highly fundamentalist cultures, there isn't really a strong benefit to a family from pressuring someone to keep a child. In developed countries, children are a huge liability for the first ~20 years of their life. Meanwhile, with assisted suicide, there are strong incentives around cessation of ongoing medical care (costs), and obviously inheritance.
Between that and possibility of presenting some murders as assisted suicide, I think if the idea is to be implemented, it really needs to be done extra carefully.
Car kills many, doesn't stopped that from banning cars completely. Yes do it carefully, but no. Even people who live alone, doesn't have anything valuable, are not able to die with dignity. Must suffer.
And even then: We already allow families to decide to take folks off of life support.
Many terminally ill people receive substandard palliative care, and want assisted suicide – it seems likely that at least some wouldn't want it any more (or might never have sought it in the first place) if their palliative care was better.
What are the ethics of saying to people "we aren't going to do anything to fix the substandard palliative care you are receiving, but we are happy to help you kill yourself"?
Of course we shouldn't have substandard care, palliative or not. Of course we should try not to let people suffer. It isn't like palliative care is at all affected by whether or not we have assisted suicide, as we can obviously have good palliative care without allowing assisted suicide at all (or the opposite, but we aren't that cruel yet).
But not matter how much we try to make folks comfortable, it simply doesn't always happen and not everyone wants to die slowly, even if they are comfortable in the meantime. Even the most comfortable care we can muster for the majority of folks doesn't result in a good quality of life, after all. (Of course, some folks are more comfortable than others just because of income and situation, which we can lessen but not get rid of entirely).
Assisted suicide shouldn't always come from the folks receiving palliative care, either. I'm fine with folks having plans in place to die if they have dementia, for example, or if their wish for a decade has been to kill themselves, despite getting are. Or heck, even if someone wants to die at x age, if they live that long. Well-planned assisted suicide should be available.
> who has never been in the very unfortunate position of needing to die.
Defining that line is very, very, tricky. People only reach this point at a desperate time, when they are potentailly very vulnerable. There's a huge difference between two people in an end-of-life situation, one who is willing to die and one who isn't, yet both may "need" to die, and we have the meansright now to provide an easier transition from "terminally ill" to the former, but yet people end up in the second bucket all the time.
> Because so few people ever get stuck in that situation.
Yet we have many many people who have suicidal thoughts, and who commit suicide (arguably needlessly), when we have methods of helping. We should have the same methods of helping people who are terminally ill.
(That's not to get into the mess of what do the family of the patient want; things get messy _really_ fast when money is on the line as I've unfortunately witnessed, and it tears families apart.)
It's not the same line as "Life is wretched and miserable (because of depression, bankruptcy, relationship breakdown...) and therefore I'd like to check out." Those are all at least potentially fixable with reasonable odds of success.
Something like locked-in syndrome after a bad stroke, or late-stage Alzheimer's - potentially a vegetative state that can last a decade - isn't.
The real problem is making sure the choice is free and informed - not being "encouraged" by other family members for personal gain, revenge, or some other unacceptable motivation. Possibly after a person is no longer considered legally competent, but may still be signalling a current desire to avoid death even though they left a living will stating they would welcome it.
It does indeed get messy very, very quickly.
Open legalisation complicates all of that and turns it into a much harder problem than it is already. The courts would spend a lot of time dealing with those cases.
How would you do this?
One way or the other, I think you would end up attempting to create a metric for QoL. Some people, for example, might want death after losing their limbs, or their sight - a difficult life, but not a painful one, some people are born without these facilities and manage to live fruitful lives. If you allow death for those cases, why not evaluate regular suicides the same way?
You know how people will sometimes change their mind when confronted with reality? You know how some men scoff at a dangerous activity until they are pushed out from the crowd to do it themselves? The reality of the situation sets in. All of a sudden your mind is revealing to you things that you had not considered before. Revealing intuitions and details that it had not performed for you because your brain doesn’t consider things in detail until they are perceived as important to you — until they are in front of you. This also happens for death. All of a sudden, details fill in that have never been emphasized in the idiot internet threads. All the details of how a suicide attempt can go wrong, where the line of death really is, all the ways that you might feel pain. It’s completely overwhelming if you are suddenly in desperate need of death. It’s the experience of the most marginalized and abused group of people to ever exist. Forced to die in gruesome and terrible ways and in horrific home made contraptions that very often create a huge amount of pain before fulfilling their purpose.
It's one of those things that I might support in idealistic principle but where I develop serious reservations when I factor in how ugly people can be in real life.
But the family members making that choice weren't footing the bill and they didn't have to lay in bed all day, so why wouldn't they try? I also feel they had a gross misunderstanding of the capabilities of modern medicine.
In each case the doctor's asked, "do you want to give him/her a fighting chance?" Of course, no one wants to say 'no' to that question, because they don't really understand what's possible and don't understand what "winning" actually looks like.
Right, and people don't generally think to ask those questions because, at that point, they're not in an emotional state that is conducive to stopping and asking questions. That said, the phrase "fighting chance" is absolutely terrible here. It's far too loaded to convey what would actually be meant here.
That appears to be the crux of the problem: "footing the bill". It may sound counter intuitive but I have found that when cost is removed from the equation, then better decisions may arise or at least a few extra distortions are removed.
When money is directly involved then there are several potential, and in my view damaging, extra approaches that might arise. There's the: "we've spent so much and achieved [something] so let's go all in." Or "we've only spent this much so let's go for gold" Or: "We are paying for this anyway and so let's give it a go".
Health care systems that are funded by taxation ie pre-paid, in my view, escape those problems and encourage end of life scenarios that are more likely to be better (for a given value of better)
I think that I am very lucky to have the UK's NHS to care for me. We pay for it nominally via a second income related tax called "National Insurance" - we also have a country wide "Income Tax". The NI rate is: https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance/how-much-you-pay - nominally 12% but is only levied on the first £x. It gets a bit complicated because employers also pay NI for their employees.
The thing about an organisation like the National Health Service is that if you have one and you get hurt, you get it fixed without thinking about it too much. We do pay quite a lot for it but it works and the cost is not so noticeable compared to Income Tax. My dad had a few heart related snags a few years ago that involved a three week stay in Exeter General, then a helicopter flight to London and a six month stay in the Royal Brompton, mostly in their intensive care unit (ICU) which would have been horrendously expensive. One of the docs described how he massaged my Dad's heart in his hands when the bloody thing decided to get a bit weary of being fiddled with too much.
The UK's NHS is not perfect or anywhere near perfect. It's a whopping great organisation with some good and some not so good staff and some horrendous bureaucracy. That said, I would prefer it to any other medical system. It works eventually and often works surprisingly well and often preemptively. Dad would be dead without it. Dad's GP practice missed a few clues. When his doc went on holiday, a Hospital Registrar (as it turns out) was drafted in to cover. Dad presented and his feet didn't touch the floor until he was in a hospital bed.
Again, I have to emphasise that the UK's NHS is not perfect but I don't worry about what to do if my arm fell off or something. I get to A&E and they fix me up.
I have also been at the far end of palliative care (Mum). Again the NHS did the business and did its best (cancer) but it had to accept defeat. That's when Hospice Care cuts in alongside the NHS. St Margarets were absolutely fantastic.
In the end it is taxation that pays for this thing but the fact that you can forget about money when dealing with health care issues is quite important, I think.
Many religious organisations want something similar and deliver approximately nothing in return.
I think we got a good deal in the end.
It remains a serious criminal offence in the UK to assist in suicide (suicide itself hasn't been a crime for decades).
> I think that I am very lucky to have the UK's NHS to care for me. We pay for it nominally via a second income related tax called "National Insurance" - we also have a country wide "Income Tax".
That is utterly incorrect. National Insurance is not ring-fenced; the money goes into the government's revenue pool, same as Income Tax. It can then be spent on weapons, wars, or subsidies for fossil-fuel industries.
NI is just a wheeze to allow governments to increase taxes on income without appearing to raise the rate of Income Tax. There's a reason the rate of NI has never gone down.
[Edit] I appear to be wrong: NI income doesn't go into the "general pool", at least not directly (it seems to be complicated).
NI is an obnoxious tax. It is capped; earnings over about £900 pw are untaxed. Pensioners are untaxed. So the burden falls most-heavily on less-well-off working people (the less you earn, the greater proportion of your earnings goes in NI).
What could be the other reason? Was she naieve? I do know she loved him, but it seemed he needed to do things for her love? She messed with his meds so she could more inheritance. Just American greed.
It's not like she even needed the money. She had two shoe stores in LA, and was a shoe designer.
She got all his cash. She had a lawyer on speed dial according to my brother. My mother got nothing. (We are not a litigious family for the most part.)
She spent part of the money on a Yurt in the backyard of her beautiful home, after a world trip staying in fancy hotels.
She wonders why her brothers, and mother, don't return calls.
One more thing. My father had a huge liver tumor. He had great insurance (Union Cadillac policy). Because modern doctors do not palpitate anymore, he went decade with the tumor. We all knew something didn't look right, but he was told by a doctor it was just scarring from a hernia operation. Not one doctor felt his abdomen, except interns at the hospital. (After the third different intern pushed on his stomach, I said enough. He's not a learning tool for you.)
He left the hospital with an incurable diagnosis. Many specialist looked at him.
This doctor affiliated with the hospital kept dragging my sick father in for appointments. He told him he would operate, after this sanctimonious speech about drinking.
My father was naturally elated.
The doctor called a couple of weeks later, and said he couldn't operrate.
It was all those unnessary office visits that irritated me, along with getting a guy's hope up.
(Sorry about the ramble. I once said, I didn't understand why Steve Jobs didn't use western medicine to cure his Pancreatic tumor. What I didn't know is how low the cure rate of that cancer was. I didn't know what kind of cancer (I hear their are basically two types, and one is somewhat kinda curable. The other is not.). I never should have said anything. When my day comes, I'm using that Right to Die option. I'm glad CA has that now. Oh boy, I am now depressed.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3313570 (2011)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5104430 (2013)
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die...
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/feb/08/how-doctors-c...
The bottom of the Cancerworld article says:
> This blogpost was first published in 2011 on Zócalo Public Square
The bottom of the Guardian article says:
> Taken from an article originally published at Zócalo Public Square.
I've seen what chemo does to people. No thank you. If I get cancer, I'll just self-medicate with whatever opioids I can get my hands on until either the cancer kills me or the pain gets bad enough that the opioids stop being able to do anything for it, at which point I'd just intentionally OD by a massive amount while alone in a remote location.
(and on top of all the debilitating, crippling effects of chemo, I am also, for multiple reasons, particularly attached to my hair... it's one of the only parts of my body I like, and I would literally rather die than lose my hair)
The only way I would even remotely accept chemo is if I could get a 100% guarantee in writing—with an agreement to immediately kill me if I wake up early—that I will be put in an induced coma before chemo and not taken out of the coma until after my hair has completely grown back and surpassed its previous length, and I want the anaesthesiologists legally obliged to err on the side of me not waking up ever over the possibility of me waking up before my hair has fully grown back.
My hair grew back. After just a couple months I felt great again. It was worth it.
The only way I would even remotely accept chemo is if I could get a 100% guarantee in writing—with an agreement to immediately kill me if I wake up early—that I will be put in an induced coma before chemo and not taken out of the coma until after my hair has completely grown back and surpassed its previous length, and I want the anaesthesiologists legally obliged to err on the side of me not waking up ever over the possibility of me waking up before my hair has fully grown back.
Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.
I am guessing that he had testing which determined it had spread and was terminal. It seems implausible that an otherwise healthy person would just pass up on a 15% chance of survival.
My dad went through some of that post-stroke. No way.
My mother (who worked in medicine and was very healthy) was diagnosed with a GBM and had a brief course of radiation to try to shrink it without a ton of luck.
She stopped working and went home and had an OK year then an awful 4 months and then fell out of bed and broke her hip and never woke up.
She could’ve maybe had 2 or 3 pretty bad years if she’d “fought” and was “lucky.”
Yes, chemotherapy has very adverse side-effects. But it's also the best course of action we currently have for a lot of cancer patients. It varies depending on the type, grade and stage of the illness, as well as the patient's overall health [1]. It should not be rejected outright.
Now for my personal anecdata: My sister in law was in her 30s when they detected her breast cancer, and got chemo for some time. It was a very difficult time for her, but it worked - the cancer receded. She kept having to do get periodical checks to keep tabs on it.
Unfortunately her cancer came back, and this time it was more aggressive - it resisted all treatments and eventually metastasised. They took her off chemo, but her health deteriorated very quickly anyway. She died 1 and a half years ago, at home.
On average, chemotherapy gave her and my brother around 7 years of life, in exchange of some very shitty quality of life moths due to side effects. They definitively made the right choice in taking chemo the first time, and not taking it the second time. A lot of people's cancers never come back.
I am not saying that chemotherapy is worth it in all cases. I am painfully aware that it isn't. But it is worth in a lot of cases. Don't reject it outright.
PS: I should mention that we live on a country with a civilized health care system where her treatments were paid for by the state's Social Security. No one in this story had to deal with "can we afford this treatment" problems. If you are in that situation, I am sorry for you.
I'm a bit warey of his assertion that all doctors think the same way as him though. He relies pretty heavily on his experience and a few anecdotes. I wonder if there is any actual data on how doctors view "futile" care and end of life.
“Most physicians would forgo aggressive treatment for themselves at the end of life, study finds” https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2014/05/most-physicia...
Some people are expecting to get punched in the face.
My mom was an ER and ICU RN and NP. She’s to the point where I have a written protocol for when and how I am to call 911 in the event of an emergency for her.
Nobody wants to die, but few who understand want to live in the purgatory between life and death that futile care entails.
This is why palliative care is so important. All of our goals in life are vastly different all the time, even cycling every week.
I wonder how often physicians die as a result of taking a drug such as Nembutal - the drug recommended by Exit International. Civilians can't buy this drug - not even illegally, e.g. on the Dark Web, as far as I can see. But physicians can.
I don't want to get caught. I don't want the kind of "palliative care" that amounts to death-by-dehydration. If I get throat cancer and can't swallow, no amount of pain-killers will make my death pleasant.
I want a stash of Nembutal, so that I can do myself in, if the prospect I'm facing is a nest of wires and tubes or untreatable pain. It's an ethical disgrace that it's illegal for me to manage the end of my own life.
Apparently any relative that accompanies me on the plane to Switzerland risks prosecution for assisting a suicide. So if I want to die quickly and peacefully, I'll have to do that on my own.
The amount of humbug that swirls around this subject makes my head swim.
Unfortunately so much of this is decided at the last minute as people are terrified or just desperate for any lifeline no matter the consequences. Choices that, had they made them without those immediate pressures they may have made differently and had time to truly think through.
No. A death panel does not decide when someone is to die but when treatment is to be stopped due to mounting costs, regardless of the wishes of the patient.
This was the definition of the death panel:
> Palin's spokesperson pointed to Section 1233 of bill HR 3200 which would have paid physicians for providing voluntary counseling to Medicare patients about living wills, advance directives, and end-of-life care options.
Everybody but a few enthusiasts refuse to treat ageing instead of cancer or heart diseases. People in general refuse to treat ageing as a disease, thinking it is something natural.
I would not want a couple more miserable years on earth, I want a few million years of a healthy young life.
Aging is not natural? I certainly understand why someone would not consider it a disorder.
> I want a few million years of a healthy young life.
I would avoid literal genies if I were you.
We should treat aging the same way. Some people's bodies fail them at 80, but others live to be 100+. If we develop good treatments there's no reason that everyone can't live to be 100 in relatively good health.
How are heart disease and cancer not natural?
Aging is also slightly different in that it's how our bodies are supposed to work as far as I understand it, which is not very well (Possibly as a cancer prevention mechanism).
Telomeres and Aging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere#Association_with_agin...
Telomeres and Cancer prevention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere#Telomerase
The parent isn't claiming that; they are pointing out that heart disease and cancer are just as natural as aging. We spend a lot of effort to cure heart disease and cancer, so why not do the same with aging?
"Be fine with dying of old age or else you're a villain" is this weird, fundamental, Christian part of our common mythos/ethics/stories. The evil villain seeks immortality. The kindly old witch or wizard or Pope dies peacefully because it is right.
Aging is bad. We might be able to fix it. There are a thousand downsides and challenges that come with a solution to old age, but that doesn't mean leaving aging in place is better.
If there is a tiger chasing you, wouldn't you try to escape or fight? Or just give up and let the tiger eat you? It is natural, tiger also want to eat, right?
People who support the notion of death seem not to constantly fear it themselves, but view it as something hypothetical, that they wouldn't have to face themselves in the near future (likely several decades).
Human brain can make that judgment wherever it wants. I think the general case that shitty medical routes are just not worth it is often true.
I mean, if an elder gets into a car accident, shouldn't we try to save them? If a fire starts in a nursing home, shouldn't the residents be evacuated and the fire put down? How come that everyone understands the importance of saving lives, but some flip 180 degrees on it if the cause looks "natural" enough and the victim is old enough?
Isn't that a bit like supporting the notion that there is a sky above us?
Perhaps you are referring to people who reject the notion that death is to be avoided in all circumstances, whatever the consequences.
Sure, not by default, but on the merits of those downside, you probably should conclude that it is in fact better to have people age. Especially if it serves to only be available to the rich and powerful. That's just a shortcut to utter dystopia.
I think most people would think that a poor person under the rule of a despotic king is still better off alive than dead. So how come that, if the king were to live for hundreds of years, that poor person would suddenly be better off dead?
I feel this line of reasoning boils down to, "if we can't have perfect equality, everyone should die".
Better 100 good years than 500 bad ones.
Would you be comfortable slamming other religions in the same causal way? If not, why not?
Following the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, leading to an expansion of the provision of care. Among the earliest were those built ca. 370 by St. Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea Mazaca in Cappadocia in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), by Saint Fabiola in Rome ca. 390, and by the physician-priest Saint Sampson (d. 530) in Constantinople, Called the Basiliad, St. Basil's hospital resembled a city, and included housing for doctors and nurses and separate buildings for various classes of patients.[7] There was a separate section for lepers.[8] Eventually construction of a hospital in every cathedral town was begun.
Christian emphasis on practical charity gave rise to the development of systematic nursing and hospitals after the end of the persecution of the early church.[9] Ancient church leaders like St. Benedict of Nursia (480-547) emphasized medicine as an aid to the provision of hospitality.[10] 12th century Roman Catholic orders like the Dominicans and Carmelites have long lived in religious communities that work for the care of the sick.[11]
Some hospitals maintained libraries and training programs, and doctors compiled their medical and pharmacological studies in manuscripts. Thus in-patient medical care in the sense of what we today consider a hospital, was an invention driven by Christian mercy and Byzantine innovation.[12] Byzantine hospital staff included the Chief Physician (archiatroi), professional nurses (hypourgoi) and orderlies (hyperetai). By the twelfth century, Constantinople had two well-organized hospitals, staffed by doctors who were both male and female. Facilities included systematic treatment procedures and specialized wards for various diseases.[13]
Medieval hospitals in Europe followed a similar pattern to the Byzantine. They were religious communities, with care provided by monks and nuns. (An old French term for hospital is hôtel-Dieu, "hostel of God.") Some were attached to monasteries; others were independent and had their own endowments, usually of property, which provided income for their support. Some hospitals were multi-functional while others were founded for specific purposes such as leper hospitals, or as refuges for the poor, or for pilgrims: not all cared for the sick.
When and where the first hospital was established is a matter of dispute. According to some authorities (e.g. Ratzinger, p. 141), St. Zoticus built one at Constantinople during the reign of Constantine, but this has been denied (cf. Uhlhorn, I, 319). But that the Christians in the East had founded hospitals before Julian the Apostate came to the throne (361) is evident from the letter which that emperor sent to Arsacius, high-priest of Galatia, directing him to establish a xenodochium in each city to be supported out of the public revenues (Soxomen, V, 16). As he plainly declares, his motive was to rival the philanthropic work of the Christians who cared for the pagans as well as for their own. A splendid instance of this comprehensive charity is found in the work of St. Ephraem who, during the plague at Edessa (375), provided 300 beds for the sufferers. But the most famous foundation was that of St. Basil at Cæsarea in Cappadocia (369). This "Basilias", as it was called, took on the dimensions of a city with its regular streets, buildings for different classes of patients, dwellings for physicians and nurses, workshop and industrial schools. St. Gregory of Nazianzus was deeply impressed by the extent and efficiency of this institution which he calls "an easy ascent to heaven" and which he describes enthusiastically (Or. 39, "In laudem Basilii"; Or. fun. "In Basil.", P.G., XXXVI, 578-579).
And uncontrolled regeneration can give you tumors [citation needed], so there is no easy path other than your own genetics or having a good lifestyle.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere
Even rivers and stars have an end...
I doubt they are the primary cause of ageing.
I prefer the theory explaining ageing as an epigenome misregulation that David Sinclair describes.
Maybe I'm overthinking it, but I feel like that is the classic hubris of mankind to aspire to become gods. We want to control nature and life, yet our limited knowledge prevents us from understanding the ramifications of our actions until it is too late. (Under a White Sky is an interesting read on the subject)
Gods were invented by people who refused to admit their ignorance of things they couldn't understand or explain.
Every year the list of unexplainable things gets shorter and shorter. Maybe we'll never be able to explain everything, but I do believe it's within reach to understand the aging process to the point of being able to reverse or even halt it. It may not happen in our lifetimes, and the society that figures it out may not be able to deal with the ramifications properly, but they will learn over time. Just as we've done with scientific and technological advancements in the past. Sometimes you can't figure out how to deal with something until you have to deal with it.
But we are becoming gods. The problem isn't with the aspiration, the problem is that we currently suck at being gods and need to get better at it.
It's like that old joke about a group of PMs that have "invented the general AI". Now all that's left to do is for some researchers and engineers to create it.
Until the general public accepts the necessity of the age-related research, there won't be any effective mechanism for age reversion.
NIH yearly budget is 35B dollars. Half of that they spend on cancer research, the other half divides between the other diseases. Age research is a tiny fraction of this budget.
Until NIH spends at least 1/3 of their annual budget on fighting aging, there won't be any significant progress.
To me, these weeds are to be uprooted: Christians willingly inflict suffering unto others, as they believe it is the natural state of human being and must be increased in servitude of their God, especially near death.
https://www.hoover.org/research/religious-faith-and-charitab...
> The differences in charity between secular and religious people are dramatic. Religious people are 25 percentage points more likely than secularists to donate money (91 percent to 66 percent) and 23 points more likely to volunteer time (67 percent to 44 percent).
https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/philanthropy-magazine...
> In study after study, religious practice is the behavioral variable with the strongest and most consistent association with generous giving. And people with religious motivations don’t give just to faith-based causes—they are also much likelier to give to secular causes than the nonreligious.
https://givingusa.org/just-released-giving-usa-special-repor...
> People who are religiously affiliated are more likely to make a charitable donation of any kind, whether to a religious congregation or to another type of charitable organization.
> Religiously affiliated households give as much or more to other types of charities as non-religiously affiliated households do.
It is Jesus’ final message.
Sin does not exist, they made it up to make themselves and others suffer.
Have you considered that some people are so keen on giving away their fortunes because it makes them suffer more, and thus makes them think they are now cleaner in God’s eyes?
The Christian message is that there's nothing we can do in our own power to erase sin, including suffering, hence the need for Jesus in the first place.
Death in Christianity is the final release from sin and its consequences, e.g. suffering, and into eternal joy...and being released of the weight of the consequences of sin eternally is supposed to bring joy and love in this life.
So I have no idea what you're talking about.
There are actually a LOT of different belief systems within Christianity and the related cults surrounding it, so you can't entirely sum them up by saying "Christianity". How I would respond to anyone stating that suffering is required to pay for sins is that it is un-Biblical and they've warped the message of Jesus, and are adding to/complicating the gospel.
This is possible in the Catholic church because edicts of the Pope and Councils have had equal (or at least near equal, I'm not a Catholic historian or theologian) weight with scripture, which of course have no weight at all to Protestantism as the Pope is just another person. Mother Theresa and penitents have such a drastically different belief system, that while I would not go so far as to call them non-Christian as I think only God alone determines that, I would say that their teachings are not the same religion as mine. Saints again are a purely Catholic thing, so to me and other protestants, Mother Theresa is just another person, and "Saint" is a worthless designation from the Catholic Church. In addition, individual adherents of what is classified as "Christian" can teach and believe (or fail in their belief) of the core doctrines and cease to become what I would consider Christian, despite doing things in the name of Christ. The church during the time of Paul's letters and Acts were dealing with the same thing, people using the name of Christ who were not what Luke or Paul considered Christians.
It sounds like a no-true-Scottsman argument, and perhaps it is, but the argument that I'm making is that you are lumping billions of people together, when #1 they don't lump themselves together (Catholics have considered protestants and the reformers heretics as well), and #2 they believe and practice drastically different things. You will likely hear Protestants hedge when asked if Roman Catholics are Christian, and the reason is because on an individual basis, there are Christians within the Roman Catholic church. But what they teach is not what we consider the Christian gospel.
Following the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, leading to an expansion of the provision of care. Among the earliest were those built ca. 370 by St. Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea Mazaca in Cappadocia in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), by Saint Fabiola in Rome ca. 390, and by the physician-priest Saint Sampson (d. 530) in Constantinople, Called the Basiliad, St. Basil's hospital resembled a city, and included housing for doctors and nurses and separate buildings for various classes of patients.[7] There was a separate section for lepers.[8] Eventually construction of a hospital in every cathedral town was begun.
Christian emphasis on practical charity gave rise to the development of systematic nursing and hospitals after the end of the persecution of the early church.[9] Ancient church leaders like St. Benedict of Nursia (480-547) emphasized medicine as an aid to the provision of hospitality.[10] 12th century Roman Catholic orders like the Dominicans and Carmelites have long lived in religious communities that work for the care of the sick.[11]
Some hospitals maintained libraries and training programs, and doctors compiled their medical and pharmacological studies in manuscripts. Thus in-patient medical care in the sense of what we today consider a hospital, was an invention driven by Christian mercy and Byzantine innovation.[12] Byzantine hospital staff included the Chief Physician (archiatroi), professional nurses (hypourgoi) and orderlies (hyperetai). By the twelfth century, Constantinople had two well-organized hospitals, staffed by doctors who were both male and female. Facilities included systematic treatment procedures and specialized wards for various diseases.[13]
Medieval hospitals in Europe followed a similar pattern to the Byzantine. They were religious communities, with care provided by monks and nuns. (An old French term for hospital is hôtel-Dieu, "hostel of God.") Some were attached to monasteries; others were independent and had their own endowments, usually of property, which provided income for their support. Some hospitals were multi-functional while others were founded for specific purposes such as leper hospitals, or as refuges for the poor, or for pilgrims: not all cared for the sick.
When and where the first hospital was established is a matter of dispute. According to some authorities (e.g. Ratzinger, p. 141), St. Zoticus built one at Constantinople during the reign of Constantine, but this has been denied (cf. Uhlhorn, I, 319). But that the Christians in the East had founded hospitals before Julian the Apostate came to the throne (361) is evident from the letter which that emperor sent to Arsacius, high-priest of Galatia, directing him to establish a xenodochium in each city to be supported out of the public revenues (Soxomen, V, 16). As he plainly declares, his motive was to rival the philanthropic work of the Christians who cared for the pagans as well as for their own. A splendid instance of this comprehensive charity is found in the work of St. Ephraem who, during the plague at Edessa (375), provided 300 beds for the sufferers. But the most famous foundation was that of St. Basil at Cæsarea in Cappadocia (369). This "Basilias", as it was called, took on the dimensions of a city with its regular streets, buildings for different classes of patients, dwellings for physicians and nurses, workshop and industrial schools. St. Gregory of Nazianzus was deeply impressed by the extent and efficiency of this institution which he calls "an easy ascent to heaven" and which he describes enthusiastically (Or. 39, "In laudem Basilii"; Or. fun. "In Basil.", P.G., XXXVI, 578-579).
> I (and the doctors in my family whom I’ve asked) am pretty much like the doctors in the article. If I get a terminal disease, I want to wring what I can out of the few months of life I have left and totally avoid any surgery, chemotherapy, amputations, ventilators, and the like. It would be a clean death. It would be okay.
> My big fear, though, is that I won’t get a terminal disease.
So I also hope that if I get an incurable and unpleasant condition, it's a terminal one.