4 ms·

"Old age" isn't a cause of death? Maybe more appropriate is "Korea doesn't care about tracking the cause of death." That, or they are butchering foreigners and

"Old age" isn't a cause of death? Maybe more appropriate is "Korea doesn't care about tracking the cause of death." That, or they are butchering foreigners and old people over there.

duskwuff 2y ago
Old age isn't a cause of death. It can be a contributing factor, but it isn't an immediate cause.
BobaFloutist 2y ago
I think they're saying more that when the ultimate cause of a fairly unsurprising death is unclear or ambiguous, unlike saying "CHF" or "Brain Death" as the "cause" like we often do, they just say "unknown." To clarify, heart failure and brain death are going to be part of every death, no matter the ultimate cause, but sometimes if it's a little difficult to pinpoint the actual reason someone whose body was failing kind of across the board died, the doctor declaring death will just pick a failed organ that was clearly linked to the death and point the finger at it.
- southernplaces7 2y ago
  >To clarify, heart failure and brain death are going to be part of every death Not entirely related to the topic at hand, but i want to mention it as a darkly amusing anecdote: During the heyday of the Soviet NKVD's (predecessor to the KGB) management of Stalin's monstrous purge of Soviet society, hundreds of thousands of people were killed in all sorts of ways. Many of them died by torture or just by being shot illegally (even by Stalinist Soviet standards) Since publicly acknowledging this made for bad optics even in the Stalinist USSR, a very common formal, officially recorded cause of death in these cases was "heart failure". Why? Because whether you shoot, starve, freeze or beat and torture someone to death, their ultimate cause of death involves the stopping of their heart. It's crudely honest for the sake of superficial legality, without being in the least bit truly honest about the context of what was happening.

"Old age" isn't a cause of death? Maybe more appropriate is "Korea doesn't care about tracking the cause of death." That, or they are butchering foreigners and old people over there.

duskwuff 2y ago

Old age isn't a cause of death. It can be a contributing factor, but it isn't an immediate cause.

BobaFloutist 2y ago

I think they're saying more that when the ultimate cause of a fairly unsurprising death is unclear or ambiguous, unlike saying "CHF" or "Brain Death" as the "cause" like we often do, they just say "unknown." To clarify, heart failure and brain death are going to be part of every death, no matter the ultimate cause, but sometimes if it's a little difficult to pinpoint the actual reason someone whose body was failing kind of across the board died, the doctor declaring death will just pick a failed organ that was clearly linked to the death and point the finger at it.

southernplaces7 2y ago
>To clarify, heart failure and brain death are going to be part of every death Not entirely related to the topic at hand, but i want to mention it as a darkly amusing anecdote: During the heyday of the Soviet NKVD's (predecessor to the KGB) management of Stalin's monstrous purge of Soviet society, hundreds of thousands of people were killed in all sorts of ways. Many of them died by torture or just by being shot illegally (even by Stalinist Soviet standards) Since publicly acknowledging this made for bad optics even in the Stalinist USSR, a very common formal, officially recorded cause of death in these cases was "heart failure". Why? Because whether you shoot, starve, freeze or beat and torture someone to death, their ultimate cause of death involves the stopping of their heart. It's crudely honest for the sake of superficial legality, without being in the least bit truly honest about the context of what was happening.