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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)

#171

Post by kelnos »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #63
indecisive_user wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> How are heart disease and cancer not natural?

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?

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

#172

Post by Barrin92 »

wombatmobile wrote: post #127

The important difference between physicians and non-physicians in relation to death is not that doctors understand disease mechanisms. 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 cri…

Yes, ironically enough, physicians don't pathologize death the same way most of our culture does. They see it enough for it to lose the quasi supernatural grip that it has in a culture that doesn't talk about it, and so they're just able to make much more measured decisions about quality of life at the end of life than other people.

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

#173

Post by Broken_Hippo »

skissane wrote: post #80
Sebb767 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wan…

> Very few people (at least in my experience) think that assisted suicide itself is bad, but the abuse potential is massive. 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 goi…

This isn't how it works, though - they are two separate issues.

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.

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

#174

Post by Broken_Hippo »

SCLeo wrote: post #130
slg wrote: 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.

Sure, but they also pressure folks into marriage and birth and organ donation and all sorts of things. It is definitely possible to do it in ways that help minimize this.

And even then: We already allow families to decide to take folks off of life support.

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

#175

Post by dom96 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #157
raptorraver wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due religious reasons I'm contemplating my death quite often. Not daily but I try to do it at least weekly. I don't say it has made me comfortable about being mortal but compared to people around me I seem to have more casual relationship to it. Like the other day my boss asked me if I'll come to the office next week and with smile on my face I answered, that yes I'll come if I won't die during weekend. He got quite…

I have the same thing. I often contemplate my death, and how I am going to die. And yes, I derive some comfort from it - knowing I have lived my best life and done the best I could at it. There are things I haven't achieved yet that I want to experience, so I don't want to go just yet. But if it happens, then I'm good with that. But I'm an atheist, and firmly believe that this is all we get, and death really is the e…

What often brings me joy is thinking about my life before birth, I like to think death will be just the same. If so life after death can't be so bad.

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

#176

Post by Broken_Hippo »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #99
ehnto wrote: 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.

>Adoption is rare 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.

Most folks in the US are too poor to adopt and it doesn't matter how well they'd care for the child: It isn't exactly a free process just looking out for the needs of the child. (I'd argue that if we were just looking out for the child, the legal costs would be covered by taxes and eligibility wouldn't be put on finances at all. We'd have to use tax money to support the child without adoption, after all).

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.

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

#177

Post by Broken_Hippo »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #87
ehnto wrote: 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.

In countries with a good safety net (including parental leave and child care help), comprehensive sex education, free access to contraception and abortion and general health care, abortion rates are often lower.

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.

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

#178

Post by Thorrez »

nsonha wrote: post #124
WillPostForFood wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Adoption is rare 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.

> children adopt from other countries 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.

Many people would like to adopt a newborn. Various laws and other barriers make it essentially impossible to adopt a newborn from another country.

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...

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

#180

Post by Thorrez »

lostcolony wrote: post #131
RickJWagner wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd hope someone would know fairly early in the pregnancy if they will be able to provide for a child or not. (i.e. before the baby can feel pain, is basically a complete human being, etc.) 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.

Most abortions are as soon as the woman knows she's pregnant. Very, very few are late term, and, as a sibling mentions, those are almost universally due to health risks (possibly also a major change in financial status, relationship, etc). 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…

>those are almost universally due to health risks

>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...

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