9 ms·

Years ago when I was in medical school, I concluded to improve quality of life, no matter how finite, is a better endeavour than to prolong it. There's somethin

by drchiu 4y ago

Years ago when I was in medical school, I concluded to improve quality of life, no matter how finite, is a better endeavour than to prolong it. There's something tremendously philosophically satisfying to recognizing that death is just the recycling of life so that new life can happen.

abletonlive 4y ago
This is the mindset of most of the medical field so basically you bought into the status quo. Nothing profound about that. Those that are interested in longevity reject such notions because it leads to very little research in how to prolong life, or see death as a disease worth curing.
- drchiu 4y ago
  I suppose what I didn’t reveal is that I spent a lot of time before medicine trying to coax cells whether in a culture or some other medium to grow in the way I wanted it to grow. And it was hard. It’s been a while, but if I could recall correctly, cells tended to have a finiteness in their very nature. I think at some subconscious level, I interpreted this as nature’s way of expressing that is how things are designed to be. I don’t do life science anymore, but deal with computers now. And it’s a whole lot more predictable and malleable. (Heck, it’s easy if I were to compare it to running gels or prepping cell lines.) But I would be ecstatic if I could witness some science fiction level advancement in this field in my lifetime. I doubt it, but I would be amazed should it happen.
  - RajT88 4y ago
    > It’s been a while, but if I could recall correctly, cells tended to have a finiteness in their very nature. This is known: https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Hayflick_limit https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Hayflick_limit
    - drchiu 4y ago
      Yeah that. There’s something even more subtle. Experiments run with certain older lines just… failed more. It’s weird. The supervisor would say, “Yeah go to X’s lab and grab theirs.” Like the reproducibility is contingent on so many factors. Very depressing and tedious. There’s definitely a lot we don’t know and the knowledge gap is huge. And even if it can be done in the lab, translating some finding to a workable therapeutic is another story.
    - worldsayshi 4y ago
      Yes, but: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa
    - oceanplexian 4y ago
      On the other hand, there are 150-year-old tortoises and 200-year-old whales out there. So it's not like there is some finite impossibility to living a long time, other animals have figured it out.
      - reducesuffering 4y ago
        Even better, human species live indefinitely through human cells making new human fetal cells. At it's essence, it's still a chemical transformation process. Some compounds are being converted, old human to new human, which keeps life going indefinitely.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - RajT88 4y ago
        And possibly 500 year old sharks. (Not yet confirmed)
    - stephc_int13 4y ago
      If you look about it a certain way. At the species level, we've already reached biological immortality. The trick is to have some cells starting the process over. Sexual reproduction always started from pre-existing cells, rebuilding a full individual. Using this process to repair all the living cells does not seem impossible. Our understanding of DNA programming is far from sufficient to enable this kind of project, but I don't see why it could not be possible at some point.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >so basically you bought into the status quo. Nothing profound about that Nothing profound in being scared shitless of it either
- noobermin 4y ago
  Ask an oncologist if they feel that is the status quo. 20% of people who get chemotherapy get it within weeks of dying, as if suffering even more will prolong their life. Not all oncologists are like that but many feel harsh treatments which ruin a person's other healthy cells with tons of side effects is worth it for keeping a patient alive just a few months more.
  - asveikau 4y ago
    I don't know much about oncology, but it strikes me that they probably don't know with certainty which of the 20% it will be. They have a limited number of interventions that put the patient through hell, and it sometimes works. There's probably extreme cases with bad metastasis where it's very unlikely that they can be saved, and they can probably tell some of those. But I think not all the time. Must be a very depressing job to observe this over the years.
- swayvil 4y ago
  Someday they'll demonstrate existence of an afterlife to the satisfaction of the average consumer and the whole world is gonna do a Homer Simpson. I mean, it'll flip our whole value system.
  - jjcon 4y ago
    Genuinely curious for your perspective- can you elaborate?
    - swayvil 4y ago
      I'm into meditation and similar mystic weirdness. I've seen what appears to be a literal "city of the dead". No doubt a metaphor. But metaphor appears to be a big part of "reality". I've also seen what appears to be a "creator of reality". So ya, it's a weird world.
  - thefounder 4y ago
    So the religious fanatics were right all along? I think the afterlife is actually the life after you realise there is no afterlife. Many never reach it.
    - swayvil 4y ago
      Well a lot of those guys are just citing other guys. Not the most robust epistemology.
    - swader999 4y ago
      It's pretty hard to dispute the thousands of NDE reports. Similar experiences, descriptions across different cultures and religions. Young children, even the blind since birth all fairly consistently report the same.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- soheil 4y ago
  Perhaps the disease worth curing even more is the mindset that rejects longevity.
cultureulterior 4y ago
I don't agree, and you shouldn't force those of us who don't agree to die.
- beebeepka 4y ago
  You'd have someone else wipe your ass rather than embrace death? How dignified.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    His choice. Not yours.
    - archsurface 4y ago
      It's a legitimate consideration.
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      It’s funny on HN tonight. We have one thread where a county in rural Tennessee lets houses burn down for want of a $75 free or 0.13% tax increase, because freedom. And here, because freedom, people are advocating for the freedom to pretend death isn’t approaching, at the cost of millions to society.
      - willnonya 4y ago
        How do you equate some people's denial of death with a cost of millions to society rather than as costs to the indovidual?
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    - maxbond 4y ago
      That you cannot imagine a reason does not mean they don't have one, or that it is your business.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> I concluded to improve quality of life, no matter how finite, is a better endeavour than to prolong it. Seems like a false dichotomy. Aside from life support in one's final days, most practical medical interventions for prolonging life also result in significant improvements in quality of life. For example, healthy diet and exercise contribute to extended lifespan, but they also improve quality of life significantly during all stages of life.
- rscho 4y ago
  > Aside from life support in one's final days, most practical medical interventions for prolonging life also result in significant improvements in quality of life. I can assure you that you'd never ever hold that opinion if you were a healthcare worker. A big part of our job is to maintain alive people with a horrible quality of life who should be long dead, oftentimes without even being able to know if they'd in fact prefer dying...
- willnonya 4y ago
  There is a lot of subjectivity in your conclusion. Healthy diet for example is not a singularly defined term and depending on specifics can be argued to lower quality of life even if they improve health.
- afpx 4y ago
  Are you over 50? A year over 50 feels as satisfying as one month being 18. I’d rather enjoy what I have left.
  - dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
    Can you paraphrase this? Having trouble understanding what you mean and I want to know.
    - cldellow 4y ago
      I'm not afpx, but I understood them to be saying "you have fewer good days when you're 50 than when you're 18." That is, health wise, it's better to be 18 than to be 50. :) A related concept is the quality-adjusted life year (QALY), which is used when weighing the cost/benefits of certain interventions. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year
VoodooJuJu 4y ago
Absolutely. Place aux autres - make room for others.
version_five 4y ago
That seems to be the literal opposite of almost all public health advice - we always seem to focus on how there may be some potential negative consequence of everything and ignore the impact on quality of life (I'm mainly thinking of food and drink, but I think it extends e.g. to covid hysteria). In the end, advice just gets ignored, or forms part of a puritanical shaming system that nobody adheres to but everybody judges others based on. It would be nice if more public health institutions adopted your attitude and realized life is worth living and isn't just about living as long and boring a life as possible.
nomdep 4y ago
A very predictable line of thought to have in your twenties
- gffrd 4y ago
  If there’s enlightenment to be had, don’t withhold it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sigzero 4y ago
> just the recycling of life so that new life can happen You have no idea if that is true or not though.
- gffrd 4y ago
  I think they just mean reproduction?
verdenti 4y ago
radu_floricica 4y ago
So... you're _for_ cryopreservation? Because having it as a standard end-of-life option is the simplest way of cutting on unnecessary live prolonging procedures. You get sick, you enjoy the time you have, you get frozen. It's a win-win proposition from pretty much every point of view.
soheil 4y ago
> recognizing You're not recognizing anything you're deluding yourself to accept the incredible loss that is death.
credit_guy 4y ago
> death is just the recycling of life so that new life can happen. This is Stockholm syndrome. We all die, so some of us choose to think it's a good thing. Death in general is needed for recycling, but not human death. Humans represent 0.00000001% (warning, made up number) of the available matter. We don't need to die for others to live.

by drchiu 4y ago

abletonlive 4y ago

This is the mindset of most of the medical field so basically you bought into the status quo. Nothing profound about that. Those that are interested in longevity reject such notions because it leads to very little research in how to prolong life, or see death as a disease worth curing.

drchiu 4y ago
I suppose what I didn’t reveal is that I spent a lot of time before medicine trying to coax cells whether in a culture or some other medium to grow in the way I wanted it to grow. And it was hard. It’s been a while, but if I could recall correctly, cells tended to have a finiteness in their very nature. I think at some subconscious level, I interpreted this as nature’s way of expressing that is how things are designed to be. I don’t do life science anymore, but deal with computers now. And it’s a whole lot more predictable and malleable. (Heck, it’s easy if I were to compare it to running gels or prepping cell lines.) But I would be ecstatic if I could witness some science fiction level advancement in this field in my lifetime. I doubt it, but I would be amazed should it happen.
- RajT88 4y ago
  > It’s been a while, but if I could recall correctly, cells tended to have a finiteness in their very nature. This is known: https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Hayflick_limit https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Hayflick_limit
  - drchiu 4y ago
    Yeah that. There’s something even more subtle. Experiments run with certain older lines just… failed more. It’s weird. The supervisor would say, “Yeah go to X’s lab and grab theirs.” Like the reproducibility is contingent on so many factors. Very depressing and tedious. There’s definitely a lot we don’t know and the knowledge gap is huge. And even if it can be done in the lab, translating some finding to a workable therapeutic is another story.
  - worldsayshi 4y ago
    Yes, but: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa
  - oceanplexian 4y ago
    On the other hand, there are 150-year-old tortoises and 200-year-old whales out there. So it's not like there is some finite impossibility to living a long time, other animals have figured it out.
    - reducesuffering 4y ago
      Even better, human species live indefinitely through human cells making new human fetal cells. At it's essence, it's still a chemical transformation process. Some compounds are being converted, old human to new human, which keeps life going indefinitely.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - RajT88 4y ago
      And possibly 500 year old sharks. (Not yet confirmed)
  - stephc_int13 4y ago
    If you look about it a certain way. At the species level, we've already reached biological immortality. The trick is to have some cells starting the process over. Sexual reproduction always started from pre-existing cells, rebuilding a full individual. Using this process to repair all the living cells does not seem impossible. Our understanding of DNA programming is far from sufficient to enable this kind of project, but I don't see why it could not be possible at some point.
coldtea 4y ago
>so basically you bought into the status quo. Nothing profound about that Nothing profound in being scared shitless of it either
noobermin 4y ago
Ask an oncologist if they feel that is the status quo. 20% of people who get chemotherapy get it within weeks of dying, as if suffering even more will prolong their life. Not all oncologists are like that but many feel harsh treatments which ruin a person's other healthy cells with tons of side effects is worth it for keeping a patient alive just a few months more.
- asveikau 4y ago
  I don't know much about oncology, but it strikes me that they probably don't know with certainty which of the 20% it will be. They have a limited number of interventions that put the patient through hell, and it sometimes works. There's probably extreme cases with bad metastasis where it's very unlikely that they can be saved, and they can probably tell some of those. But I think not all the time. Must be a very depressing job to observe this over the years.
swayvil 4y ago
Someday they'll demonstrate existence of an afterlife to the satisfaction of the average consumer and the whole world is gonna do a Homer Simpson. I mean, it'll flip our whole value system.
- jjcon 4y ago
  Genuinely curious for your perspective- can you elaborate?
  - swayvil 4y ago
    I'm into meditation and similar mystic weirdness. I've seen what appears to be a literal "city of the dead". No doubt a metaphor. But metaphor appears to be a big part of "reality". I've also seen what appears to be a "creator of reality". So ya, it's a weird world.
- thefounder 4y ago
  So the religious fanatics were right all along? I think the afterlife is actually the life after you realise there is no afterlife. Many never reach it.
  - swayvil 4y ago
    Well a lot of those guys are just citing other guys. Not the most robust epistemology.
  - swader999 4y ago
    It's pretty hard to dispute the thousands of NDE reports. Similar experiences, descriptions across different cultures and religions. Young children, even the blind since birth all fairly consistently report the same.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
soheil 4y ago
Perhaps the disease worth curing even more is the mindset that rejects longevity.

cultureulterior 4y ago

I don't agree, and you shouldn't force those of us who don't agree to die.

beebeepka 4y ago
You'd have someone else wipe your ass rather than embrace death? How dignified.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  His choice. Not yours.
  - archsurface 4y ago
    It's a legitimate consideration.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    It’s funny on HN tonight. We have one thread where a county in rural Tennessee lets houses burn down for want of a $75 free or 0.13% tax increase, because freedom. And here, because freedom, people are advocating for the freedom to pretend death isn’t approaching, at the cost of millions to society.
    - willnonya 4y ago
      How do you equate some people's denial of death with a cost of millions to society rather than as costs to the indovidual?
- pessimizer 4y ago
  - maxbond 4y ago
    That you cannot imagine a reason does not mean they don't have one, or that it is your business.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> I concluded to improve quality of life, no matter how finite, is a better endeavour than to prolong it. Seems like a false dichotomy. Aside from life support in one's final days, most practical medical interventions for prolonging life also result in significant improvements in quality of life. For example, healthy diet and exercise contribute to extended lifespan, but they also improve quality of life significantly during all stages of life.

rscho 4y ago
> Aside from life support in one's final days, most practical medical interventions for prolonging life also result in significant improvements in quality of life. I can assure you that you'd never ever hold that opinion if you were a healthcare worker. A big part of our job is to maintain alive people with a horrible quality of life who should be long dead, oftentimes without even being able to know if they'd in fact prefer dying...
willnonya 4y ago
There is a lot of subjectivity in your conclusion. Healthy diet for example is not a singularly defined term and depending on specifics can be argued to lower quality of life even if they improve health.
afpx 4y ago
Are you over 50? A year over 50 feels as satisfying as one month being 18. I’d rather enjoy what I have left.
- dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
  Can you paraphrase this? Having trouble understanding what you mean and I want to know.
  - cldellow 4y ago
    I'm not afpx, but I understood them to be saying "you have fewer good days when you're 50 than when you're 18." That is, health wise, it's better to be 18 than to be 50. :) A related concept is the quality-adjusted life year (QALY), which is used when weighing the cost/benefits of certain interventions. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year

VoodooJuJu 4y ago

Absolutely. Place aux autres - make room for others.

version_five 4y ago

That seems to be the literal opposite of almost all public health advice - we always seem to focus on how there may be some potential negative consequence of everything and ignore the impact on quality of life (I'm mainly thinking of food and drink, but I think it extends e.g. to covid hysteria). In the end, advice just gets ignored, or forms part of a puritanical shaming system that nobody adheres to but everybody judges others based on. It would be nice if more public health institutions adopted your attitude and realized life is worth living and isn't just about living as long and boring a life as possible.

nomdep 4y ago

A very predictable line of thought to have in your twenties

gffrd 4y ago
If there’s enlightenment to be had, don’t withhold it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sigzero 4y ago

> just the recycling of life so that new life can happen You have no idea if that is true or not though.

gffrd 4y ago
I think they just mean reproduction?

verdenti 4y ago

radu_floricica 4y ago

So... you're _for_ cryopreservation? Because having it as a standard end-of-life option is the simplest way of cutting on unnecessary live prolonging procedures. You get sick, you enjoy the time you have, you get frozen. It's a win-win proposition from pretty much every point of view.

soheil 4y ago

> recognizing You're not recognizing anything you're deluding yourself to accept the incredible loss that is death.

credit_guy 4y ago

> death is just the recycling of life so that new life can happen. This is Stockholm syndrome. We all die, so some of us choose to think it's a good thing. Death in general is needed for recycling, but not human death. Humans represent 0.00000001% (warning, made up number) of the available matter. We don't need to die for others to live.