3 ms·
End of life care is an incredibly expensive endeavor; why are we so adamant about extending the inevitable? IMO it's a subconscious projection of the fact that
by syndacks 6y ago
End of life care is an incredibly expensive endeavor; why are we so adamant about extending the inevitable?
IMO it's a subconscious projection of the fact that we do _not_ live meaningful lives in our day to day, and so we fixate on a fantastical (yet inspiring, universal) compensation of extending it forever.
"Left to take care of the elderly" suggests we don't value life in the first place. Why extend it further?
- DrRobinson 6y agoThe idea isn't that people will live in that fragile and unhealthy state even longer, the idea is to also extend how long we're healthy. Imagine being as healthy as a 30 year old when you're 70 for example. This is often also called healthspan and we probably don't want to extend lifespan too much without also extending the healthspan.
- jgwil2 6y agoYes but aging and death are inevitable regardless. Delaying them on an individual basis does nothing to solve that problem.
- DrRobinson 6y agoSure, death is. But biological aging is something we probably can solve so if that gives us 30 more healthy years that's great! We might not end up as immortals but doesn't mean it's pointless to try to live a longer and healthier life.
- jgwil2 6y agoI think it's a fair assumption to make that we cannot increase healthspan significantly more than we can increase lifespan. The increases to each would be similar; after all, a healthy body won't just keel over and die. The post you were responding to specifically mentioned the costs of end of life care. If we can't reduce the amount of time between when a body begins to fail and when a person dies, then we've done nothing to address that issue.
- koheripbal 6y agoExtending life usually means extending the period of healthy independent function - not extending the life of someone in their incapacitated state.