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With modern medicine we can keep more people alive than Nature intended

Well most animals do die long before they reach the number of heartbeats that people generally have before dying.
It is also rare for other species to a live significant portions of their life after fertility is lost.

Without proper medical care life expectancies would plummet, bring our average number of heartbeats to more in line with other animals.
 
Matthiasa said:
Well most animals do die long before they reach the number of heartbeats that people generally have before dying.
It is also rare for other species to a live significant portions of their life after fertility is lost.

Without proper medical care life expectancies would plummet, bring our average number of heartbeats to more in line with other animals.
Click to expand...

Not too be too much of a scaremonger but wait until the antibiotics we have now are rendered useless.

Blind guess, I'd say about 20 years.
 
That's where medical care fails. They spend too much effort dragging out someone's death. It's certainly not quality time for the patient.

It doesn't seem worth it that half of medical expenses occur in the last two months of life.
 
BladeVenom said:
That's where medical care fails. They spend too much effort dragging out someone's death. It's certainly not quality time for the patient.

It doesn't seem worth it that half of medical expenses occur in the last two months of life.
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Well they arent going to spend lots of money on you if your already healthy.

By definition sick people are nearer death than healthy ones so of course more money is going to be spent on them.
 
JEDI said:
but should we?

pain, quality of life, etc

edit:
some people sign "do not resuscitate" papers in nursing homes/hospital.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_resuscitate
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So...when people have children with life-threatening birth defects or mental defects, should we just take them out into the woods and let the wild animals eat them? What about old people? Just encourage them to wander out onto the ice so a polar bear can have a meal?
 
BoomerD said:
So...when people have children with life-threatening birth defects or mental defects, should we just take them out into the woods and let the wild animals eat them? What about old people? Just encourage them to wander out onto the ice so a polar bear can have a meal?
Click to expand...

polar bears need to eat too!
 
Better health and sanitation is one thing. Extending one's life beyond its limit is unnatural and should be discourage. If one dies from heart failure, do not resuscitate.
 
JEDI said:
but should we?

pain, quality of life, etc

edit:
some people sign "do not resuscitate" papers in nursing homes/hospital.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_resuscitate
Click to expand...

Yes. We should. However, I would like to make some relevant points.

1) Level of pain generally (statistically speaking) has nothing to do with level of physical disability or proximity to death (as it were). Most people with chronic pain could live perfectly normal lives for another 30 or 40 years if only their pain were removed. On the other hand, a significant proportion of heart attacks, especially in older patients, do not cause pain. Strokes are often painless, and unless you have the bad luck to have a cancer that commonly metastasizes to bone or nerves, chances are you won't feel much pain either.

2) The biggest improvements we have made in terms of quality of life are against infectious diseases, and against acute coronary syndrome. Without antibiotics, modern hygiene practices, and vaccinations, we would go back to the 'good old days' of human life expectancy at birth being 30-40 years. The second major set of advances, against vascular disease (e.g. diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, etc.) have been made necessary only because of the increased life expectancy brought about by the reduction in death from infectious disease. Without that, so few people would live long enough to die from a heart attack that it would hardly matter.

3) The Terri Schiavo-style cases of people being on comas without permission are relatively rare. Those cases get press because having someone with severe liver impairment sign a DNR and subsequently lie relatively peacefully when they next bleed from their oesophageal varices is not really newsworthy.

Baked said:
Better health and sanitation is one thing. Extending one's life beyond its limit is unnatural and should be discourage. If one dies from heart failure, do not resuscitate.
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Why? And where's the limit?
 
Tell it to my 97 yr. old mother-in-law. She can barely get around on her walker, everything is failing (eyesight, hearing, back, etc.), and her quality of life blows. Her sister died a quick death at 100, but the end was not pretty. I'm an avid hiker; I hope to drop dead on the trail one day. Either the local critters have me for dinner, or some kind soul finds me and my family gets to deal with yet one more body to dispose of.

Sorry, but "modern medicine" is just a scam worked by the drug companies and the medical establishment to keep people alive so those who live off them can continue to do so. There is no humanitarian factor here.
 
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The biggest problem is we let too many people live who will never live an enjoyable or fulfilling life.

If someone is born with major defects, or worse, a terminal disease/defect that will result in an almost guaranteed death in their first decade or so of life... why do we let them live? We are such a selfish species and so damned self-centered into thinking "all life is precious" and "my children, no matter how fucked up, deserve a chance to "enjoy life""
If I'm so fucked up I'd die before my tenth birthday, I'd rather not even have been born. Or, not kept alive after birth.

We waste so many resources on keeping people alive that, honestly, do not need to be kept alive.
One of these days I'll get around to making a living will that takes care of the same thing for myself, in the event I ever get into a very slow death spiral of sorts. No more than a few weeks in a coma (unless medically induced and can be brought back at a moment's notice), and none of that long-term care bullshit. If I have to be cared for almost every moment of the day, I'm not LIVING, and I will take my own life at that point if doctors won't let me go. It is futile and a criminal waste of resources and time to keep people alive when the realities of the situation basically state they aren't fulfilling a full life anymore.

But we won't ever realize that, not until it's too late and we've dug our own grave. As a species, we used to practice infanticide when defects were spotted (not regularly, but it happened), but we've gotten so wrapped up in religious morality that it's borderline criminal to even THINK such things anymore.
 
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We should give people that want to die the option to die. If a person is lying in a hospital bed in constant pain and wants to die, the humanitarian thing to do is to give them that option instead of forcing them to stay alive. This applies to the young and to the old.

destrekor also nailed it as far as spending a ton of extra resources on lost causes.
 
If you want universal heathcare you're going to have accept that funding and resources are finite. 80 year old aren't going to be getting open heart surgery. People aren't going to be rotting in an ICU for 9+ months. Chemo treatments to very old people are probably going to whacked. There just simply will not be enough money to pay for all of those services. I think you'll see a natural transition to this from an economics standpoint. Hospitals will be forced to follow stricter acceptable/meaninful use/outcome tables and things that are allowed right now will not be in the future.
 
You mean not changing at all from what insurance companies are doing now?
We spend more on healthcare than anywhere else and we have far from the best heath outcomes as a result of all that spending.
 
Battle Royale, imo.

WelshBloke said:
Not too be too much of a scaremonger but wait until the antibiotics we have now are rendered useless.

Blind guess, I'd say about 20 years.
Click to expand...

We've already hit that point in some cases. MRSA's ugly cousin, VRSA, is resistant to the last ditch effort Vancomycin antibiotic and in some cases has been shown to be a nosocomial infection. The overuse and misuse of antibiotics has drastically reduced the potential effectiveness of medication over longer periods of time and now we've fallen behind. There are no penicillins in the pipeline that can be used as broad-spectrum antibiotics. In fact there really aren't many antibiotics in the pipeline at all. Part of this has to do with the fact that these drugs aren't that profitable and the other has to do with the decades-long process and millions of dollars that it takes to get a drug like that to market. A wrongful death lawsuit is worse than having someone die because nothing was tried...Yay for modern medicine!

Anyway, Battle Royale.
 
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