Preserving Life As Long As Possible…

The past 100 years or so have seen some big changes in the medical and heathcare industries. Scientists and researchers have taken things that back then would have been called miracles and turned them into things that we now consider “normal.” Individuals, as well as private companies, universities, and governments, have poured immense amounts of time, money, and resources into the quest to heal people and keep them in good health.

Around 100 years ago, a person was considered “fortunate” if they survived to see 80. Today we have nursing homed full of people in their 80’s and beyond. Back then people died of such forgotten things as tuberculosis, polio, smallpox, and even simple infections.

Today we’ve grouped our major killers into a few big, general groups. Cancer. Heart disease. Liver disease. HIV. We also have things such as accidents and suicides that make up some fairly substantial mortality categories.

For some reason, I was thinking about all this yesterday while I was in the shower. I was thinking about what it was that drove humankind to progress in the medical field in the way that it has, as well as what the results have been. I think the driving force behind all of the achievements that mankind has accomplished is one simple philosophy.

This philosophy is very prevalent in most aspects of our daily lives now. It’s so seared into our American minds that we don’t even consciously think about it, and we assume that everyone who doesn’t subscribe to it has “issues.”

This philosophy, which has no real name as far as I know, says that, “Life is precious and special, and must be preserved and prolonged as long as possible, at any cost.”

It seems right. It seems noble. It seems fair, and just, and good. Yet, I believe it is responsible for some big problems facing our nation right now, and will get even worse if we put them off longer.

While it’s nice to try and keep people alive as long as possible, it’s a fact that the older a person gets the more money it takes to keep them alive. As people age, their wear and tear of life begins to take its toll, and the longer a person survives the more of a toll it takes. With the average lifespan for people today being up roughly 20 years more than in the previous century, that’s 20 years that people pay to keep people alive longer, only to have them die in the end anyways.

The social security system began as a good idea, but now it’s obvious to pretty much everyone that it isn’t going to last much longer unless it is drastically changed. While some of that is due to the fact that the ratio of workers to people drawing on social security has gotten slim, most of this problem is because there are more people living longer, and those people are costing more to sustain because of all their medical expenses and things like that.

I doubt most people seriously think about this, but someday it’s going to have to stop. Someday people are going to look at how long they are able to keep people “alive” and say, “How long is enough?” Honestly, how many years does a person need?

This isn’t where I’m going to insert the old euthanasia argument. It might be where some people would say, “But you can’t dictate to someone how long they can live.”

How many of the people in America today would still be alive if they didn’t have some medical treatment or procedure to keep their bodies from shutting down? I find it a little strange that people don’t think twice about doing things to keep death from naturally happening, but yet they think it’s wrong to not intervene and at least attempt to stop death.

Yet in spite of the best efforts of anyone and everyone, death cannot be postponed forever. So when a doctor does something to keep a person functioning for a little longer, they’re just using money and resources to stop a natural biological result of being alive.

One question I wondered that I had never thought about before was, “Why haven’t we spent more time, energy, and resources on trying to prevent aging?” Maybe it’s just not possible, so people think it would be a waste. I really can’t say. But how much of a favor are you really doing a person if they would have died at 65 and you keep them alive another 25 years? Roughly half of those years are spent wasting away in a nursing home (even though they now try to make it sound like it’s not a bad place to be).

Wouldn’t it be much better if a person could take those extra years and go places and do things and create things and actually continue to LIVE instead of just staying alive?

Eventually we’re going to come to a point where we can no longer afford to keep everyone alive as long as possible, because technologically we’ll be able to keep people alive even longer than now. Yet the costs will always go up higher.

I think perhaps we should stop looking at death as something so terrible. Almost any time a death is reported in the news, it’s a “tragedy.” Why? Why is it so hard for us to just accept that life is a natural consequence of being alive?

Anyhow, I’m getting tired of writing about this. I know it’s not going to make any difference, because very few people would ever really think about NOT keeping people alive as long as possible, so this is mostly just wasted words. But hey, someday I’ll be able to look back and point to this and say, “See? I was right.”

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“Ferocious angels and the falling stars
But I know just how dangerous wishes are.”
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Spin Doctors