A doc’s eloquent plea: It’s typically the son or daughter who has been physically closest to an elderly parent’s pain who is the most willing to let go. Sometimes an estranged family member is “flying in next week to get all this straightened out.” This is usually the person who knows the least about her struggling parent’s health. … With unrealistic expectations of our ability to prolong life, with death as an unfamiliar and unnatural event, and without a realistic, tactile sense of how much a worn-out elderly patient is suffering, it’s easy for patients and families to keep insisting on more tests, more medications, more procedures. … When their loved one does die, family members can tell themselves, “We did everything we could for Mom.” … At a certain stage of life, aggressive medical treatment can become sanctioned torture. When a case such as this comes along, nurses, physicians and therapists sometimes feel conflicted and immoral. … A retired nurse once wrote to me: “I am so glad I don’t have to hurt old people any more.” (
I'm guessing that cost is not the real issue. If it were, you could appeal to insurance companies to substitute cryonics for more expensive aggressive medical treatments at the end of life. (Note for example that medication for assisted dying is a covered benefit in Oregon.) It would make good business sense, as cryonics is less expensive than pursuing aggressive treatment. However first you would need to get doctors recommending it. For that to happen, you need them either recommending it as a medical method of increasing the patient's long-term survival chances, which I see as unlikely to fly (on its own) any time soon, or recommending it as an alternative to reduce suffering and cope with anxiety about death.
That would be awesome. There's a practical barrier, though; how would the cryonic procedure get paid for? Health insurance won't cover it, and only the quite well-off would be able to afford paying for it outright instead of with a life insurance policy purchased in advance.
I wonder if medical professionals could be persuaded to recommend cryonics on the grounds that it encourages the acceptance of death (where "death" = a state in which the patient no longer feels pain). It occurs to me that it could save a lot of suffering. Even cases where cryonics is not chosen, simply having that option on the table could result in a reduction in anxiety (since the choice to not engage in cryonics would be a choice to come to terms with death) compared to never considering it to begin with.
This post hits really close to home. My grandmother, a very active woman who raised chickens and pigs and grew vegetables, fell and broke her hip. She picked up a nasty infection in the hospital. Eventually the decision had to be made: insert a feeding tube or not? My mother, after consulting with her pastor, had the tube put in. My grandmother spent another year completely bed-ridden and in incredible pain. Then she died.
All of their advanced care prolonged her unhappiness. When I was growing up, my church taught that using feeding tubes or respirators is "playing God." Now for some odd reason not using a feeding tube or respirator is "playing God."
You have been warned about violating OB rules on comment frequency, and have not responded or changed your behavior. Congrats on being the first ever person to be banned from commenting further on OB.
That's simply an outright lie. My god you're a desperate one for a corrupt son of a bitch.
You have been warned about violating OB rules on comment frequency, and have not responded or changed your behavior. Congrats on being the first ever person to be banned from commenting further on OB.
It’s typically the son or daughter who has been physically closest to an elderly parent’s pain who is the most willing to let go. Sometimes an estranged family member is “flying in next week to get all this straightened out.” This is usually the person who knows the least about her struggling parent’s health...
It's certainly plausible that people prolong the suffering of their family members in order to signal/demonstrate-caring/etc. But if we're looking for objective decision making, wouldn't you expect that the burden felt by those taking care of the patient to be a stronger a bias? Who is more likely to lie to themselves?
Apologies, but my link to the Dylan Thomas poem above evidently takes one to some kind of lunatic-fringe website, which for unknown reasons happened to have posted that good poem (and which also became the #1 hit for it on Google!) Please, instead, use the following link if you are interested in reading the poem: http://www.poets.org/viewme...
I don't find Robin's earlier "Choose life at any cost" remarks to be inconsistent with what Robin wrote above. Rather, I believe he was exhorting us to do that as a personal choice for ourselves, as opposed to enforcing excessive care upon another suffering person. For the former, and to put it more poetically, consider Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night."
You're right that seems to contradict Stephen's complaint. But then again, medical spending correlates strongly with wealth in general, which correlates negatively with religiosity, does it not? I'd be surprised if the inverse relationship between religiosity and health spending would survive, if controlled for wealth.
There is also a problem with the medical community that thinks in terms of procedures and treatments rather than comfort and ease which is often what is desired but much more difficult to obtain.
I meant singularity in the superficial meme sense but breakthrough was meant to imply extra-long or post-biological life.
Probably better to just rephrase: It seems on one hand Robin is against life-extending tech, and on the other hand he is pro life-extending tech. Is it just a difference of degree? How do we cross the margin between high marginal cost life extension and low cost life semi-permanence (em life, etc.) without growing pains that can sometimes look like torture?
It sounds like the argument in this post is that we need to get better at dying, but the larger narrative of this blog has more to do with avoiding death.
I'm guessing that cost is not the real issue. If it were, you could appeal to insurance companies to substitute cryonics for more expensive aggressive medical treatments at the end of life. (Note for example that medication for assisted dying is a covered benefit in Oregon.) It would make good business sense, as cryonics is less expensive than pursuing aggressive treatment. However first you would need to get doctors recommending it. For that to happen, you need them either recommending it as a medical method of increasing the patient's long-term survival chances, which I see as unlikely to fly (on its own) any time soon, or recommending it as an alternative to reduce suffering and cope with anxiety about death.
That would be awesome. There's a practical barrier, though; how would the cryonic procedure get paid for? Health insurance won't cover it, and only the quite well-off would be able to afford paying for it outright instead of with a life insurance policy purchased in advance.
I wonder if medical professionals could be persuaded to recommend cryonics on the grounds that it encourages the acceptance of death (where "death" = a state in which the patient no longer feels pain). It occurs to me that it could save a lot of suffering. Even cases where cryonics is not chosen, simply having that option on the table could result in a reduction in anxiety (since the choice to not engage in cryonics would be a choice to come to terms with death) compared to never considering it to begin with.
This post hits really close to home. My grandmother, a very active woman who raised chickens and pigs and grew vegetables, fell and broke her hip. She picked up a nasty infection in the hospital. Eventually the decision had to be made: insert a feeding tube or not? My mother, after consulting with her pastor, had the tube put in. My grandmother spent another year completely bed-ridden and in incredible pain. Then she died.
All of their advanced care prolonged her unhappiness. When I was growing up, my church taught that using feeding tubes or respirators is "playing God." Now for some odd reason not using a feeding tube or respirator is "playing God."
I strongly agree with personal experience regarding this.
You have been warned about violating OB rules on comment frequency, and have not responded or changed your behavior. Congrats on being the first ever person to be banned from commenting further on OB.
That's simply an outright lie. My god you're a desperate one for a corrupt son of a bitch.
Why not just freeze Dad's head?
You have been warned about violating OB rules on comment frequency, and have not responded or changed your behavior. Congrats on being the first ever person to be banned from commenting further on OB.
Just in case you are unsure of how long forever is. It is until you die.
lol
My denial mechanism is functioning just fine, as nature intended, and it's reminding me that I'll live forever. What, me worry?
It’s typically the son or daughter who has been physically closest to an elderly parent’s pain who is the most willing to let go. Sometimes an estranged family member is “flying in next week to get all this straightened out.” This is usually the person who knows the least about her struggling parent’s health...
It's certainly plausible that people prolong the suffering of their family members in order to signal/demonstrate-caring/etc. But if we're looking for objective decision making, wouldn't you expect that the burden felt by those taking care of the patient to be a stronger a bias? Who is more likely to lie to themselves?
Apologies, but my link to the Dylan Thomas poem above evidently takes one to some kind of lunatic-fringe website, which for unknown reasons happened to have posted that good poem (and which also became the #1 hit for it on Google!) Please, instead, use the following link if you are interested in reading the poem: http://www.poets.org/viewme...
I don't find Robin's earlier "Choose life at any cost" remarks to be inconsistent with what Robin wrote above. Rather, I believe he was exhorting us to do that as a personal choice for ourselves, as opposed to enforcing excessive care upon another suffering person. For the former, and to put it more poetically, consider Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night."
You're right that seems to contradict Stephen's complaint. But then again, medical spending correlates strongly with wealth in general, which correlates negatively with religiosity, does it not? I'd be surprised if the inverse relationship between religiosity and health spending would survive, if controlled for wealth.
There is also a problem with the medical community that thinks in terms of procedures and treatments rather than comfort and ease which is often what is desired but much more difficult to obtain.
I meant singularity in the superficial meme sense but breakthrough was meant to imply extra-long or post-biological life.
Probably better to just rephrase: It seems on one hand Robin is against life-extending tech, and on the other hand he is pro life-extending tech. Is it just a difference of degree? How do we cross the margin between high marginal cost life extension and low cost life semi-permanence (em life, etc.) without growing pains that can sometimes look like torture?
It sounds like the argument in this post is that we need to get better at dying, but the larger narrative of this blog has more to do with avoiding death.