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Comment by stephen_g | Hacker News Reader

You never know how people will going to respond - on the other hand, if there was some chance for five year or whatever survival, the people you're closest to might never forgive you for not trying if you refuse treatment... You'd hope not, but you never know.

Then there's the problem that some have a few of the people closest to them in one camp, fully accepting, and some in the other camp, which can be terrible (I've seen it especially with people I know where it's their parent who was dying, with different siblings going either way).

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One of my nearest avoided the pain of dying from cancer and years of painful treatment simply by suiciding. It was hard to accept her choice not to stay with us for few more years, denying our care. But of course I forgave her. We all forgave her. Edit: better said, we had no business forgiving her or not, that would be the worst forms of entitlement I could imagine. What I mean is that we still love her, no hard feelings.

You never know how people will going to respond

That’s the thing. You might read “drug extends median overall survival by 3 months”.

Big deal right?

Well that’s the median. In reality it looks more like:

- 5% see a complete response (cure)

- 40% see a partial response

- 55% see no response

And of those 40% who see a partial response the median is 3 months but the range is 1 to 29 months.

So now do you do it? 1 in 20 chance of a cure and 1 in 20 chance of two more years of life and a 1 in 10 chance of 1 more year of life.

This is an interesting position to take. As someone who’s in the middle of chemotherapy I don’t think anyone’s in a position to judge me if I’m not interested in putting myself through this treatment anymore. They have no skin in the game and they’re not the ones having to deal with the side effects.

> the people you're closest to might never forgive you for not trying if you refuse treatment.

Who cares, you're dead.

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