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

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

#121

Post by javagram » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 3:50 AM UTC

IncRnd wrote: post #85

MBCook wrote: post #69

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 m…

> 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? No. A death panel does not decide when someone is to die but when treatment is to be stopped due to mounting costs, regardless of the wishes of the patient.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_panel

This was the definition of the death panel:

> Palin's spokesperson pointed to Section 1233 of bill HR 3200 which would have paid physicians for providing voluntary counseling to Medicare patients about living wills, advance directives, and end-of-life care options.

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

#122

Post by birksherty » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 3:56 AM UTC

Sebb767 wrote: post #64

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 wan…

There are lots of things that are abused but still not illegal, like cars, giving birth. If people can bring someone without their consent to have poor life, there should also a way to exit if one wants. Otherwise life is a prison for many.

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

#123

Post by irrational » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 3:56 AM UTC

My wife and I feel the exact same way - we have it legalized in our will and in statements of health (I can't remember the legal name for them - but documents about what we want to have happen if we are very sick/near death and can't speak for ourselves). Basically neither of us want anything done for us, at all. Just let us die. Please do not try to prolong things through chemotherapy, intubation, tube feeding, etc.

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

#124

Post by nsonha » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 3:56 AM UTC

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.

> 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.

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

#125

Post by irrational » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 4:00 AM UTC

advisedwang wrote: post #3

This doctor clearly has a vision for how he feels end of life should be, and then implies all (most) doctors share this and non-doctors should follow and doctors should be more vocal about the implied belief. I'm a bit warey of his assertion that all doctors think the same way as him though. He relies pretty heavily on his experience and a few anecdotes. I wonder if there is any actual data on how doctors view "futil…

It's all ancedotal, but my dad is a doctor and, in talking with him, he agrees with the author and says every other doctor he knows concurs. He is in his 70s and not in the greatest of health (he was in a car accident years ago that seriously led to a decline in his health). He hasn't changed his mind at all as he has gotten older.

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

#126

Post by xwdv » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

hellbannedguy wrote: post #50

spaceflunky wrote: post #8

Several of my grandparents spent way too long in ICU and hospice care and ultimately it wasn't worth it. I feel terrible about how their final days went, but other family members were adamant about 'throwing everything they could at it.' But the family members making that choice weren't footing the bill and they didn't have to lay in bed all day, so why wouldn't they try? I also feel they had a gross misunderstanding…

My sister kept fooling with my father's palliative care meds? Why? She claimed it was so he could spend more time with her kids. My father thought he kids were spoiled. What could be the other reason? Was she naieve? I do know she loved him, but it seemed he needed to do things for her love? She messed with his meds so she could more inheritance. Just American greed. It's not like she even needed the money. She had t…

Do not be resigned, the day may not come. When you ultimately die, you may not have to make any choice at all, you might never even know it happened, you will never even know you lived.

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

#127

Post by wombatmobile » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

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 crime. Then when it visits their family and friends, they are unprepared, except for what they know of death, which is a calamity.

Sitcoms don't include death because they exist to take your mind off work, and provide a platform for advertising consumer goods.

Friends and acquaintances don't often talk about death in expansive terms. They only offer a cliche one liner - sorry for your loss - because that's the only response they've learnt. It's a well intentioned sentiment, and also one that's constrained by a fear of death that is unwarranted.

That's a shame because death is an expansive part of life. It's the point at which a life becomes whole, and we can see someone in their entirety. Death, along with birth, is the context for life.

It's going to happen to all of us, no matter how we try to deny it or hide it. Doctors know this and so they let it in. They do this before life descends into the shadows.

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

#128

Post by pochekailov » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 4:16 AM UTC

H8crilA wrote: post #107

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…

Dude. Nobody has the slightest idea how to effectively treat "aging". The billionaires that engage in that fantasy might be pushing the state of the art a little bit, sure, but they do it from a starting position of absolute ignorance, and their efforts are mostly in vain. It's like that old joke about a group of PMs that have "invented the general AI". Now all that's left to do is for some researchers and engineers…

There are some ideas, in fact. They are not very well developed, though, because such research is very expensive, and even the very educated people on this side fiercely fighting the idea that extending people's life is a good thing.

Until the general public accepts the necessity of the age-related research, there won't be any effective mechanism for age reversion.

NIH yearly budget is 35B dollars. Half of that they spend on cancer research, the other half divides between the other diseases. Age research is a tiny fraction of this budget.

Until NIH spends at least 1/3 of their annual budget on fighting aging, there won't be any significant progress.

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

#129

Post by spoonjim » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 4:41 AM UTC

The problem with euthanasia is that the certainty of it defies all human survival instincts so it’s psychologically very difficult to press a button that ends our existence. What would be better if you could legally hire a service, while healthy, that would sneak up on you and kill you painlessly if you were in a terrible condition with nothing but pain and misery to look forward to. You could cancel them at anytime, but if you didn’t, they’d bump you off mercilessly when you needed it.

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

#130

Post by SCLeo » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 4:47 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #77

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…

> 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.