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How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

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Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#61

Post by pochekailov »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #44
pochekailov wrote: post #36

Today's medicine is focused to treat the diseases, refusing to admit that people at 70-80 years old die not from disease, but from the old age. 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 health…

Just yesterday there was an article on Hacker News attacking Bezos for having the pride and selfishness to attempt to cure aging: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28440348 "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 ri…

I never understood people who defend death

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?

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#62

Post by pochekailov »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #41
pochekailov wrote: post #36

Today's medicine is focused to treat the diseases, refusing to admit that people at 70-80 years old die not from disease, but from the old age. 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 health…

> People in general refuse to treat ageing as a disease, thinking it is something natural. 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.

Ageing is natural and harmful. Hunger is natural and harmful. Earthquakes, hurricanes, plaque are natural and harmful. We should mercilessly fight all of those, and ensure either of those maladies cause people to die.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#63

Post by ZephyrBlu »

indecisive_user wrote: post #48
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People in general refuse to treat ageing as a disease, thinking it is something natural. 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.

Aging is natural the same way heart disease and cancer are natural. Some people get unlucky and develop cancer at a young age, but we don't throw up our hands and say whelp it's just nature. 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.

> Aging is natural the same way heart disease and cancer are natural

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

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#64

Post by Sebb767 »

OneEyedRobot wrote: post #46

What ticks me off no end is the folks who (often successfully) fight against physician assisted suicide. Dementia is the interesting test case, but I think should still be allowed. 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 think the core problem is giving out a "free pass" to kill people. Very few people (at least in my experience) think that assisted suicide itself is bad, but the abuse potential is massive. And the action is, by definition, irreversible.

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.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#65

Post by adventured »

Johnny555 wrote: post #45
adventured wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it small cell lung cancer? 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 go…

While I don't usually comment on downvotes, my guess is that the downvotes are because your question can come off as being insensitive. After someone tells you about the tragic death of both of his parents, maybe don't start a guessing game of what his mother died of even if your loved one died of that same disease.

The barrage of downvotes were typical HN assuming the worst (mindless insensitivity) rather than giving a benefit of the doubt about my intent.

This, from HN's guidelines: Assume good faith.

You won't see much of that on HN in my very long experience here. People so often jump right to assuming the worst, which is why that guideline exists.

The assumption was that I was being insensitive, when the actuality was that I was going to attempt to start a conversation in order to better relate to the parent's story. I could have structured what I said better? That's fair, it happens, and it still doesn't change my intentions, which were positive.

It's the classic and true line, that people judge others by their actions without considering intentions and they prefer to judge themselves by their intentions instead of their actions. That's why trying to assume good faith on the part of someone else is so useful on forums.

I've got approximately four billion points here on HN, I don't care about the downvotes unto themselves, it's the lack of collegial communication instead of jumping right to a negative triggered reaction (a downvote, which represented a negative, incorrect assumption). You'll notice nobody asked why I was asking that very specific question, there was no attempt to give a shit about that, they all went right to behaving negatively.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#66

Post by spywaregorilla »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #44
pochekailov wrote: post #36

Today's medicine is focused to treat the diseases, refusing to admit that people at 70-80 years old die not from disease, but from the old age. 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 health…

Just yesterday there was an article on Hacker News attacking Bezos for having the pride and selfishness to attempt to cure aging: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28440348 "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 ri…

> 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.

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.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#67

Post by pochekailov »

huachimingo wrote: post #51
pochekailov wrote: post #36

Today's medicine is focused to treat the diseases, refusing to admit that people at 70-80 years old die not from disease, but from the old age. 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 health…

You could achieve more life by reactivating more regeneration, but DNA replication is costly when you do it over and over again, damaging telomeres.[1] 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...

Telomeres are only one part of the equation, and they likely natural mechanism for controlling the cell differentiation. My understanding they resemble natural breaks that prevent cells to divide uncontrollably where they shouldn't.

I doubt they are the primary cause of ageing.

I prefer the theory explaining ageing as an epigenome misregulation that David Sinclair describes.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#68

Post by burlesona »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #44
pochekailov wrote: post #36

Today's medicine is focused to treat the diseases, refusing to admit that people at 70-80 years old die not from disease, but from the old age. 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 health…

Just yesterday there was an article on Hacker News attacking Bezos for having the pride and selfishness to attempt to cure aging: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28440348 "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 ri…

Why did you feel the need to slam this as “Christian?” There’s nothing in Christianity that speaks against medicine or trying to extend life. The only thing that is different for Christians is they believe death is not the final end, and thus have less reason to be afraid. They still don’t want to die.

Would you be comfortable slamming other religions in the same causal way? If not, why not?

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#69

Post by MBCook »

Wasn’t this one of the things the “death panels” (as so expertly branded by Republicans) were supposed to help with? Helping people on Medicare decide on how they wanted to approach these kind of issues and what they wanted for advanced directives?

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.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#70

Post by spywaregorilla »

pochekailov wrote: post #61
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just yesterday there was an article on Hacker News attacking Bezos for having the pride and selfishness to attempt to cure aging: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28440348 "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 ri…

I never understood people who defend death 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?

If your mental image of people who support the notion of death is people who are just apathetically suicidal, then you're missing the point.
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