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

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141–150 of 300 posts

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

#141
I once worked with a cardiovascular surgeon who was possibly one of the most brilliant people I'd ever met. His wife was a neurosurgeon, and she was diagnosed with some rare form of brain tumour, and they both knew the prognosis. They ended up selling their little farm and all their cars and equipment, and bought a little float plane to travel the world with for her final years. I believe he passed away shortly after she did, but they got to spend the last of their time together with a very relaxing lifestyle.

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

#142
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kill themselves Many would disagree with that characterization.

potato potatoe -- it's ending a life.

At week 4 the embryo is the size of a poppy seed. It's technically alive, but it's not an actualized being.

Your concern may be genuine but it is misplaced.

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christians are more generous than the general population, so your tripe makes no sense. 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). ht…

I’m not referring to giving or philanthropy, I’m referring to the ”suffering erases sins” mindset perpetuated by Christians. 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?

Have you considered basing your characterization of 2.5 billion people on reality, rather than your own twisted mental gymnastics and fabrication of their beliefs?

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

#144
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy crap those numbers are awful. Personally I'm slightly on the side of pro-choice, but we really need to educate people more on birth control.

Bafflingly, the same political forces that oppose abortion also oppose both birth control and sex education.

Hmmmm, maybe abortion for those people isn't about protecting babies but is really about subjugation of women?

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

#145
This subverts the message a bit, but my grandmother was sent to a hospice to die as comfortably as possible. I was out of state during her treatment up until this point, but when she was being moved to hospice care, I was told to expect her passing very soon. In this case, her doctors really seemed to have run out of good options; she just hadn't responded to treatment. But, after she was moved to hospice care, she began to improve. She actually healed and recovered enough to live a few more years at an assisted living home, well enough to walk the halls (slowly) for quite a while every day, and have her kids visiting all the time.

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?

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

#146
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other reasons people want to get abortions, such as knowing they can't provide for the child or give them a safe/stable household. Adoption is rare, and the foster system in most countries absolutely ruins kids. So those aren't good alternatives.

This goes along with my thesis that if given the proper support, we would avoid the majority of them.

We should provide free birth control and better sex education. Morning after contraception should also be free -- a fertilized, un-implanted egg is not a human -- it's a potential human.

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well he did qualify the reasons he provided as being only 0.1%. So obviously there are 99.9% more reasons. 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…

My understanding is that prior to abortion being legalized, attempted abortion was not an uncommon cause of death. If someone is so willing to avoid pregnancy that they kill themselves, I don't know if it can be reasonably described as convenience anymore.

AIUI those numbers were completely fabricated by pro-abortion campaigners, and are orders of magnitude higher than the real statistics.

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad we can't ask unwanted babies if they would rather have been born into a bad life. 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 p…

If society wants more babies, the path is easy: provide financial help for couples and single mothers. The way it currently is, abortion is very attractive.

Financial help is not all it takes to stop abortions.

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

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

#149
post #130
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the abuse potential is massive. 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 ha…

Family members can pressure the patient to give up.

Family also pressure to give birth even in cases where the potential child leads a terrible life and it's abused too.
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