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What Dreams May Come

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Re: What Dreams May Come

#31

Post by Blahah »

theknown99 wrote: post #28
melling wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least trea…

Without sounding unfeeling, do we really want to add to the overcrowding and population explosion problem that much? Earth is full. Our population has doubled in the short time I've been alive. Doesn't that scare the shit out of anyone else? Imagine what would happen if you suddenly cured all forms of cancer. People would live even longer. Population would shoot up. Lack of housing, lack of jobs. More pensioners... e…

Earth is not full, it is just badly managed. And overcrowding is only happening for poor people in parts of the world historically exploited by people who are now rich.

Even if we accepted that Earth is full, surely we don't just let all the poorest people die? And extending that reasoning, why treat any diseases at all?

The fact is that we could feed everyone and cure some of the biggest killers in the world today. These are not insoluble problems, they just aren't priorities for the richest nations because they're happening elsewhere.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#32

Post by mcv »

Blahah wrote: post #15
melling wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least trea…

Really quite a huge number of people are asking that question already. And a massively disproportionate amount of science funding goes towards cancer research. Far more people in the world die of communicable and vector-borne diseases or illness related to malnourishment. These issues get much less research attention and funding because so many people in the western world are focussed on cancer. So while my heart goe…

Yeah, the fact that millions of people still die of diseases we can treat, and are often even trivially preventable, is a far bigger social tragedy than there being some diseases we cannot cure yet.

Life sucks sometimes, but there's so much more we could be doing to make it suck a lot less for a lot of people.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#33

Post by coldtea »

perlgeek wrote: post #5
bherms wrote: post #2

It's sad that when we find out something this devastating (you're dying), that we have to spend our last weeks/months/years worrying about, of all things, money. Nobody deserves this sort of thing happening to them, and when it does happen, it hurts me to think they can't spend their last months on earth focused on enjoying time with their loved ones and instead have to live in fear that their family is going to be a…

> It's sad that when we find out something this devastating (you're dying), that we have to spend our last weeks/months/years worrying about, of all things, money. I thought nearly the same. But my thought went more along the lines of "it's sad that this person's highest priorities are all about money". If it's not in the face of death that you set your priorities on your own accord, then when is it? That said, I can…

>I thought nearly the same. But my thought went more along the lines of "it's sad that this person's highest priorities are all about money".

You make it sound like it's his fault, or he wants money to hoard it or spend it.

He wants it for his family. His highest priorities are having them secure.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#34

Post by theknown99 »

Blahah wrote: post #31
theknown99 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without sounding unfeeling, do we really want to add to the overcrowding and population explosion problem that much? Earth is full. Our population has doubled in the short time I've been alive. Doesn't that scare the shit out of anyone else? Imagine what would happen if you suddenly cured all forms of cancer. People would live even longer. Population would shoot up. Lack of housing, lack of jobs. More pensioners... e…

Earth is not full, it is just badly managed. And overcrowding is only happening for poor people in parts of the world historically exploited by people who are now rich. Even if we accepted that Earth is full, surely we don't just let all the poorest people die? And extending that reasoning, why treat any diseases at all? The fact is that we could feed everyone and cure some of the biggest killers in the world today.…

IMHO we should focus on quality of life. Not quantity.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#35

Post by VMG »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #30

So the house you purchased and the van you upgraded to are not yours, disposing of your body costs more than a car, visiting family means you have to stay in a hotel, the basic survival needs of your wife and four children are not guaranteed and you want to visit Disneyland and meet celebrities before you die? Capitalism is beautiful.

can't miss an opportunity for pointless snark, eh?

Re: What Dreams May Come

#36

Post by srean »

theknown99 wrote: post #28
melling wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least trea…

Without sounding unfeeling, do we really want to add to the overcrowding and population explosion problem that much? Earth is full. Our population has doubled in the short time I've been alive. Doesn't that scare the shit out of anyone else? Imagine what would happen if you suddenly cured all forms of cancer. People would live even longer. Population would shoot up. Lack of housing, lack of jobs. More pensioners... e…

Are you not yourself adding to it ?

Re: What Dreams May Come

#37

Post by Blahah »

melling wrote: post #27
Blahah wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really quite a huge number of people are asking that question already. And a massively disproportionate amount of science funding goes towards cancer research. Far more people in the world die of communicable and vector-borne diseases or illness related to malnourishment. These issues get much less research attention and funding because so many people in the western world are focussed on cancer. So while my heart goe…

Can you provide any data or any additional clarity? There's enough food produced in the world, for example, but it just doesn't get to the people who need it. I'd like to add that I wasn't saying that money is necessarily the answer. The power of crowd-sourcing, for instance, can help in other ways.

Sure.

The WHO produces a report on causes of death wordwide[0]. Heart disease and stroke are the biggest killers, but these are, like cancer, really quite complex. Diarrhoeal diseases and respiratory infections kill a ridiculous number of people, but these are largely solved problems in the western world. Organisations like the Gates Foundation are doing great work exporting what we know about these diseases to the developing world, but governments do a pitiful amount. A number of chronic lifestyle diseases are rising: lung/throat cancer (due to smoking) and diabetes (due to eating sugar). My suggestion is that we should prioritise disease research and treatment based on how many people are dying and how easily those problems could be solved. But because funding bodies are all human, and all in the developed world, the disease they most fear is cancer.

Regarding food security, there is technically enough food produced in the world to feed everyone, if we could solve the distribution and storage problems and prevent rich governments' protectionist interference in agricultural markets and corruption in developing nations' governments. But a large amount of that wastage is also not really suitable for human nutrition. Probably the fastest way to alleviate hunger is to enable each part of the world to feed itself with food produced nearby. Because we've reached the limits of arable land in much of the world, this means making more land suitable for food production, finding new ways to provide water, and making crops be able to grow better in different conditions. The FAO's State of Food Insecurity report[1] is a good summary.

0. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/.

1. http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/

Re: What Dreams May Come

#38

Post by piyushpr134 »

Tragic as this story is, I would like to raise a point that could make life easier in event of untimely death i.e. term insurance. Term insurance is something that one should always get after getting married (or even before if your family is dependent on you). Multiple term insurances can be bought so you can keep buying more as your liabilities increase.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#40

Post by alistairjcbrown »

arethuza wrote: post #23
girvo wrote: post #3

I feel nothing but sympathy for Jonathan. I can barely imagine the pain he and his family would be going through :( What are the medical costs for someone with terminal cancer in the USA? I assume they're pretty astronomical, so I can understand why he'd ask for help (I'm donating myself). In terms of his house and the like, I was always led to believe that life insurance was specifically for cases like his? Is life…

It seems pretty common for employers to offer life cover in the UK (my wife has critical illness cover as well) - I have 4x annual salary from my employer, my wife has 3x from hers. We also both have additional personal life cover for at least 6x annual salary. This doesn't seem excessive cover to me - maybe because we are in our 40s with kids (and knowing people who have died and having close relatives who are termi…

Same: UK too and employer provides life insurance.

But when I bought a house, I was advised to get insurance cover specifically for the amount of debt remaining on the house; the policy lasts the length of the mortgage and pays out whatever is debt is outstanding.

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