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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)

#141

Post by brynnbee »

Kinrany wrote: post #132
teiferer wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can start by reading about Larry Johnson's whistleblower story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Johnson_(author) From this description, the main controversy is the allegation of hastening the death of the patient. Not sure where's the scam though.

I don't know specifically how these operations advertise, but what some people might call a scam is that cryonics does factually damage your brain extensively, and it's unclear how well anyone could possibly recover from this damage. One of the common thoughts is that maybe super advanced future sci-fi level brain scans could digitize your brain, but taking anyone's money with that as a potential outcome is probably less than awesome. And there's no currently known way that we could thaw these people's brains in a way that would persist life basically at all.

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

#142

Post by bonsai_spool »

kryogen1c wrote: post #38
bonsai_spool wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Early CPR (+AED if available) absolutely saves lives. Article is from 2011 by a family med doctor. You have to provide a denominator to make this statement. 30-day survival for out-of-hospital CPR is 10%, and discharge from the hospital (let alone functional status) is even lower. CPR is thus a great example of the OP's thesis that doctors refuse certain things based on their poor efficacy. https://www.redcross.org…

Did you read what you linked? It's not a study of the effects of cpr, it's a list of facts about cardiac arrest that occurs outside a hospital. It explicitly says cpr is life saving: >Survival chances decrease by 10% for every minute that immediate CPR and use of an AED is delayed.

> Did you read what you linked? It's not a study of the effects of cpr, it's a list of facts about cardiac arrest that occurs outside a hospital. It explicitly says cpr is life saving:

Oh my goodness, did YOU read anything on the page? Here's a literal quote with a link to a study you could have followed if you weren't just here for outrage points:

"For the past 20 years, the survival rate for cardiac arrest has hovered around 10 percent for out-of-hospital incidences and 21 percent for in-hospital events, yet research shows that high-quality CPR has a significant impact on survival outcomes, whether inside or outside the hospital."

link: https://mycares.net/sitepages/uploads/2026/2025_flipbook/ind...

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

#143

Post by bonsai_spool »

krisoft wrote: post #114
bonsai_spool wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Early CPR (+AED if available) absolutely saves lives. Article is from 2011 by a family med doctor. You have to provide a denominator to make this statement. 30-day survival for out-of-hospital CPR is 10%, and discharge from the hospital (let alone functional status) is even lower. CPR is thus a great example of the OP's thesis that doctors refuse certain things based on their poor efficacy. https://www.redcross.org…

> 30-day survival for out-of-hospital CPR is 10% Okay. And what is the 30-day survival for cases where CPR would be otherwise indicated but are not performed? It is a bit like complaining that jumping out of a burning airplane with a parachute is dangerous. Yes, it is. But jumping out of a parachute, or burning inside, is even more dangerous.

> Okay. And what is the 30-day survival for cases where CPR would be otherwise indicated but are not performed?

Great question, but it's obviously not possible to answer.

I suspect the survival rate won't be 0, and maybe won't even be less than 10%.

The point of this whole subtree is that there are interventions that people wouldn't want for themselves because the expected outcome is very poor.

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

#144

Post by Someone »

yunwal wrote: post #129
Someone wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By 80 most people have […] already lived through all the important milestones they could realistically see. That’s at least partially culturally determined. As the healthy live expectancy creeps up slowly, I expect that idea to change. There’s some truth in the saying “50 is the new 40”

This doesn’t really make a difference in the argument. You can sub 80 with 90 and the point remains the same. There is some age where you stop caring about trying to be cured, and just care about the quality of life in the immediate future

It makes, if cultural expectations lag reality of longer life spans.

I think it does; society thinks 80-year olds are physically less fit than they are in reality, shaping expectations of what 80-year olds should want, and I also think 80-year olds are influenced (even if slightly) by that.

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

#145

Post by buran77 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #122
buran77 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is that? By 80 most people have reconciled with the idea that they don't have too many years left even in the best of conditions. There's no hope of extending life, and there's little to look forward to, they already lived through all the important milestones they could realistically see. Quality is all that's left to hope for. At 50 they still can still hope for recovery and a life beyond that. They have a lot…

My parents are in their eighties and they still have a good quality of life and things to look forward to. They do have some health issues but they aren’t decrepit.

That's good to hear but that wasn't really the topic of the conversation. We were discussing people with life threatening illness where the treatment severely lowers quality of life for a very uncertain outcome.

Do you think the "things to look forward to" would incentivize your parents to focus on clinging to life at the expense of drastically increased suffering and plummeting quality of life, or on maximizing the quality they still have at the expense of losing some months or years?

Even if you are still in good condition overall, at that age you know you're probably running your last lap and the things to look forward to are nowhere near as satisfying as they were even a few decades earlier. You can always find joy in the little things but they're always shadowed by other inevitabilities.

Many healthy years to you and your family.

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

#146

Post by buran77 »

Someone wrote: post #144
yunwal wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t really make a difference in the argument. You can sub 80 with 90 and the point remains the same. There is some age where you stop caring about trying to be cured, and just care about the quality of life in the immediate future

It makes, if cultural expectations lag reality of longer life spans. I think it does; society thinks 80-year olds are physically less fit than they are in reality, shaping expectations of what 80-year olds should want, and I also think 80-year olds are influenced (even if slightly) by that.

> society thinks 80-year olds are physically less fit than they are in reality

If anything the bias is the other way around. You get to see all the 80 year olds who are fit enough to interact with society. You never see the the ones who are wasting away in their homes, hospices, and hospitals. Being old and needy is an invisibility cloak.

> I also think 80-year olds are influenced (even if slightly) by that

That "slightly" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. At that age people care about society only in the "decent human being" kind of way, not in the "let me please some strangers" kind.

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

#147

Post by gammalost »

Loughla wrote: post #27
delichon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge unspoken blind spot for a terminal hospice patient. The medicine cabinet just opens up. My dad asked the doctor exactly how much of what he shouldn't take if he didn't want a quick easy death, and the doctor just told him. He didn't end up using it but it was a comfort to him.

The amount of morphine available to the patients on hospice that I have known has made it very clear what the actual intent of those scripts is. Granted, my sample size of 6 isn't great, and 3 were in terrible pain so it made sense for them, but they had ALL the opiates. . . One had liquid injectable morphine in case he couldn't swallow. He had no issues with swallowing and wasn't in pain. I wanted to ask the doctor…

I do not know how it is in other countries, but in Sweden hospice is for a calm end. You are dying regardless

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

#148

Post by dj_gitmo »

parpfish wrote: post #51
dj_gitmo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked into this recently and it seems like it is basically impossible to pre-arrange assisted suicide for alzheimer's or dementia. Even in countries which allow death with dignity. I find it very strange because it’s so common and I’m sure many people would prefer DWD in those circumstances.

shouldn't finding a way to kill yourself be pretty easy, even without legal DWD? you can overdose on OTC meds, or get a knife, or (in America) pick up a gun.

Once you reach that state, you cannot accomplish anything like that.

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

#149

Post by bonsai_spool »

rimeice wrote: post #125

I don’t think you have to be a doctor to come to this conclusion. After therapy I realised that the most traumatic thing that took the longest to get over wasn’t watching my Dad die, it was watching him suffer through futile attempts to prolong his life by a few days in intensive care. I wish the doctors had been clearer with us about his chances of survival, I wish we had been brave/knowledgable enough to accept tha…

> I wish the doctors had been clearer with us about his chances of survival

What would they have done differently from what they actually did?

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

#150

Post by NalNezumi »

I remember reading this article a few years back, and it left an impression enough that I could retell it (but couldn't find it). Which turned out to be helpful, during/after my mother's passing half year ago.

Thanks for sharing it, I can now share it to my siblings. A silver lining that despite the cancer she could leave relatively peacefully.

The article & some comments do make me wonder: my mother refused any medication, including any painkillers, for 6 weeks after terminal diagnosis. Only on her last day, when breathing got painful did she accept a fentanyl patch to be administered. She lost her consciousness a few hours later, and less than a day later her breath. I wonder if it was dosed for that (as some form of mercy)

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