Posted on 10/05/2005 7:39:17 PM PDT by neverdem
Let me tell you how we’re going to die.
Twenty percent of us, according to a Rand Corp. study, are going to get cancer or another rapidly debilitating condition, and we’ll be dead within a year of getting the disease. Another 20 percent of us are going to suffer from some cardiac or respiratory failure. We’ll suffer years of worsening symptoms, a few life-threatening episodes, and then eventually die.
But 40 percent of us will suffer from some form of dementia (most frequently Alzheimer’s disease or a disabling stroke). Our gradual, unrelenting path toward death will take eight or 10 or even 20 years, during which we will cease to become the person we were. We will linger on, in some new state, depending on the care of others.
As the population ages, more people will live in this final category. Between now and 2050, the percentage of the population above age 85 is expected to quadruple, and the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease is expected to quadruple, too.
The president’s Council on Bioethics, under Leon Kass, who has just stepped down as chairman, has been trying to grapple with what this means. The council considers the practical issues. We don’t have enough people to take care of the millions on the glide path toward death. Fewer people go into nursing. Families are smaller and divided.
But the biggest issues the Kass report takes up are moral and cultural. We live in an individualistic society. We think of ourselves as autonomous creatures, making up our own minds and seeking self-fulfillment.
That was fine in an earlier age, when kids could go off at age 16 to make their way in the world, and when people died at age 65 after a short illness. But as the Kass report notes...
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
That much is obvious.
Gee , thanks for sharing...I was in a pretty good mood tonite. Now I've really got something nice to think about as I drift off to sleep.
How creepy, let's all kill ourselves now! Let's get a doctor to dose us!
At least all of us who know we won't go out like my grandmother did, at the age of 95, without a day in the hospital after age 70, with all her faculties intact, she just sat down on the couch one day, closed her eyes and died.
I've known several people who have passed on in just this way.
Not lost, but gone before.
May the dearly departed rest in peace, and may David Brooks get a real job someday.
Damn, isn't everyone on the glidepath to death?
God can't possibly love them as much as he does movie stars or rock and roll singers.
How creepy, let's all kill ourselves now! Let's get a doctor to dose us to death!
At least all of us who know for sure we won't go like my grandmother did. At age 95, without a day in the hospital after age 75, in full possession of her faculties, she just sat down one day, closed her eyes and died.
I've know several people who have died this way. May they and all the departed rest in peace. And may David Brooks get a real job someday.
For their own good.
Rand Corporation = liberal think tank. Go figure.
This is interesting considering the near fanatical anti smoking crusade we have been subjected to for the last 50 years.....the goal being to prolong life so we can then die of some horrific old age disease.
What a trap we are in....woe is me human lifespans are so short, lets lenghthen them....oops, woe is me human lifepans are too long now....what do we do?
I truly believe there is a large segment of human beings that simply do not know how to be happy and content, and they never will. You could send them to heaven and they would find something to worry about or bring them misery in some way.
LOL!
"The report argues strongly against living wills and advanced directives, against individuals’ attempts to control their own treatments and deaths. It is more ethical and more effective, the council believes, to give a loved one the power of attorney to make medical decisions for you, and so acknowledge your own dependence."
I know it's a depressing topic, but that take home point is on the money. Unless living wills and advanced directives have every 'i' dotted and 't' crossed and have anticipated every possibility, give someone a medical power of attorney. The medical staff and family won't be faced with dilemmas.
Only if by some miracle my ex-wife is there.
I'm surprised God can tell them apart. I can't. Wait... the stars and singers are the ones with the eyeliner, right?
Ohhhhh....Now THAT's NOT RIIIIGHT!
The first person who used this argument to insist euthanasia should be given to the disabled/crippled/chronically ill was ....Plato in the Republic.
The dirty little secret is that primitive countries have younger disabled people...typhoid might have meant six months in bed. A broken leg, six months in bed and then dependent on your family the rest of your life...
It's just that the NYTimes has no experts on how people actually lived in those days...
Don't look at me - I'm on the cancer or emphazema list.
I'm doing my part.
I think it was Jim Morrison who said that none of us are going to get out of here alive.
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