We all die at some point. While I too abhor cancer I find hard to fear it more than any other thing that can kill me - a stroke, a car accident, etc. The universe is out to get us - we've evolved into tough bastard but we've not defeated mortality.
Hm. I wonder your age. Young folk seem to think death impossibly foreign, and fear it / ignore it all equally. Older folk, that have had more first-hand experience with the decline of the flesh in themselves and those they grew up with, have more an appreciation for the difference between an abrupt death in a car accident, and a slow dissolution like cancer. Quite a lot of people fear dying more than they do death.
I've seen too many relatives and those close to me perish in various of ways before old age not to care about it. To me all forms of it ... just feel equally bad in the end from the point of fearing some personal fate or another. My view is not of someone oblivious to life's hardship. Life hits you, you take the punches, and stand as long as you can.
"Cancer" in general does not mean a slow death. Some forms can kill within weeks of a diagnosis due to quickly arising medical complications.
My intent was certainly not to be dismissive of the fate of Pieter and other cancer victims.
Depending on the type of cancer, you can go in a few weeks, months, or fight the battle for years.
Even if you endure and persist, which gets progressively easier for a lot of cancers thanks to more advanced therapies, you have to fear recurrence.
I'm not at all opposed to ending one s own life if done without severe psychological issues and done thoughtfully after plenty consideration.
Of course, if you regulate assisted suicide, as some countries in Europe have done, it leads down a very slippery slope. Who makes the decision on whether you are allowed to end your own life?
Most current religions frown upon suicide as a sin. Life is god given and not yours to decide upon (Islam, Christianity). Or suicide is viewed as an unjustified interference in the natural order (Hinduism). And therefore most of our societies reject it.
Admittedly, most suicides that are not connected to terminal illness manifest due to psychological / neurological illness and despair that might be cured or managed with proper therapy and medication, making a return to a happy life possible.
It's a fascinating and very multi-facetted issue to think about.
I'm even mixed with psychological issues on this. We can help a lot of depression; some folks with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and a slew of others. But some, help is just barely help. If they've been trying treatment for 15-20 years as an adult, and have found life to be agonizing for the most part, and they've talked it over with a psychiatrist (who could have proceedures for due consideration)... yeah, I can't say I oppose it.
This does lead back to: Who is allowed to decide whether you live or die? The slippery slope you were speaking of : To me, those are simply beginnings. It is a step above complete illegality.
And granted, when talking about mental illnesses that are considered treatable, like depression, you can't expect assistance for suicide. But when talking terminal illnesses, like cancer or dementia, then not legalizing assisted deaths is not only dangerous to others, but also an act of extreme selfishness.
We're basically condemning people to suffer extreme physical pain and/or insanity until their last breath. And as a non-practicing Christian, I suspect the reason has less to do with God and more to do with not wanting to take on some fucking responsibility for others.
They'll have to explain their sins themselves, but by observation I think its giving up that they oppose.
Going up to OPs question of who gets to decide, decades ago when my father died of some weird fast moving liver cancer no one religious had any issue with the numerous treatment options all somewhat fatal or with the concept of being able to select a treatment plan. So the oncologist says chemo option A means X amount of pain and 90% chance you'll be dead in Y months, and option B, C, D, all different tradeoffs, or we could try whatever else and you'll get Y months with X amount of pain, or do nothing and you'll be gone in about Y weeks or etc etc. Basically the patient and team of doctors pick a death date which results in an associated level of pain and medical treatment (medical profit). The Christians don't seem to mind "pick a death date" they just seem very unhappy with the idea of the treatment plan being "give up completely" "game over".
There seems this weird assumption that people can't handle picking a death date or it would warp culture too much, but any cancer patient with more than one medically approved treatment option is pretty much picking their date as it is today. Especially if its terminal cancer. Adding a third, fourth, fifth treatment option of "once we agree your quality of life is below level X then you're done" isn't going to be a huge addition or huge problem.
My wife has power of attorney or whatever its called over her Alzheimer's damaged great uncle, she has full control over all of his medical treatment plan. The only real moral or ethical argument I can think of is if it were made legal maybe only only legal agreements drafted after the law change should be valid. Although then again, the whole point of her being in charge is he trusted his niece the most so if he were competent he would likely continue to trust her the most anyway.
A young person generally hasn't seen (many or any of) their close friends grow infirm and die, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with the fact that they don't see life through that lens yet.
I wonder your age. Old folk tend to assume they have some sort of wisdom and that they can't possibly be wrong simply because of extra years spent on Earth.
Young people tend to assume they know a lot about things they have never experienced.
Rest assured, what misconceptions time does not fix for us, death certainly will.
edit: changed 'you' to 'us', none get out alive.
I'm not "old folk," but I do work in medicine. I may have seen a bit more death and death-fear than you. Then again, maybe not; I don't know you.
The only thing actually on my radar is being aware I have limited time, and am past half-way.
For those who die slowly, or lose faculties, the process seems unfair. For those who have a sudden exit the event seems unfair and can leave much unresolved and unsaid.
Euthanasia, to me, seems to be the least worst option if I should ever find myself facing a drawn out exit. I get a bit frustrated those professing relgion like to play the "you must not" card. It's not their business unless I share their belief, which I don't.
So I'll get the exit the universe decides. One day I'll be part of a star.
And even if you do share it, it's not.
See how virtuous I am empathizing with lower-order animals' suffering.
See how virtuous I am championing the sanctity of human life.
A lot of the latter can be mitigated: make those who want human life preserved "at all costs" pay cash-over-the-barrel into that "at all costs" effort, on an individual basis. Voluntary, elective euthanasia becomes an option when no one steps up to pay for the extraordinary efforts. They either withdraw their opinion immediately when they can no longer externalize their social virtue signalling choice's costs onto everyone else, or they go broke very soon and those who are suffering can make a free choice.
Or we can pursue the sane choice and legislate elective assisted euthanasia with safeguards like Switzerland's or other rationally-chosen parameters. It is long past time to recognize that our medical technology has far outstripped our ability to reliably deliver an acceptably high quality of life.
Generally euthanasia is considered an ethical option when medicine can't help anymore, and any prolonging of life would either be useless (patient is braindead) or unable to mitigate the pain of the patient.
Personally I think bringing economics in wil obfuscate the moral discussion.
Obviously neither justification is valid as a basis for making laws that apply to us all, but on the other hand, how do you tell them their concerns aren't worth listening to? Some cultures have practiced selective involuntary euthanasia in the recent past, so you can't say "It'll never happen."
I entirely agree - prolonged suffering is not life, it's misery. That decision should belong to people going through this, and not anyone else (they can discuss with those they feel appropriate).
One of the most memorable transports I ever did was for a woman with terminal metastatic cancer, taking her home where her husband had set up a bed in the living room so she could watch the sunrise.
To understand the amount of pain she was in - the movement of the ambulance driving her home about 20 miles exacerbated her pain such that her morphine dose which was already at 450mg/day was pushed to 600mg/day.
For comparison, if you're a 200lb person with a broken bone, you will likely get 15mg.
I have seen the prolonged suffering patients, and their families. Whatever happens, it's not easy.
It may be hokey but I believe the only way to win is to play excessively ;-)
Another option that most people are not aware of (that I personally consider the best way to die), is to simply fast (i.e., no food but with water) for the 30 or so days.
Thought this might not be an option 100% of the time - given the circumstances of the ailment.
This process allows you to meditate on the self, and to let go in a steady way, instead of ending in an abrupt halt.
It has been known to produce a sense of immense relief and oneness with everything.
I think "death" is just another condition like disease or disability that will eventually be defeated through technology. Someday we will have medical immortality and maybe even mind-backups, to "restore" a person (or a very close approximation of them) in the case of accident/violence.
We should be looking at death as something surpassable and not necessarily grim or morbid.
Backing up your brain does not prevent you to die. Your organic form will die anyway and you will have to go through death, it's just that a copy of you will continue without you. That's not defeating death at all.
Even without such "resurrection", medical immortality in the form of immunity to aging and disease and disability could be considered as "defeating" nonviolent death.
Memories. All you get is memories. To imagine something else is delusional. Losing a loved one hurts like hell but life goes on. Denial is one part of the processs but most of all the difficult part of the process is remolding oneself into a world where the loved one is no more.
The queen of the King of Sweden, Gustaf Adolf could not accept the passing of her husband and in her grief she stored his heart for years in a jar.
While science fiction flirts with various kinds of immortality it offers no assistance forming a philosophy for todays world.
If we ever manage to find a way off-planet, being able to live for half a millenium (or "forever", or until-I-decide) sounds AMAZING.
It does sound like quite the economic problem, though, and would certainly make earthbound resources more troublesome.
If they sit around doing nothing but eating and playing video games, that would be a waste.
As for the environmental issues and being selfish, this doesn't have anything to do with how long you live, but rather with how you live. Obviously, a society with life expectation that is so long would have to reduce the birth rates substantially (or, rather, keep them the same in the births-per-lifetime department). But if you can do that, then there's no reason why it's any more straining on the environment, whether its 1 person living for 500 years, 5 people living for 100 years each, or 10 people living for 50 years each.
You could say it's "selfish" to live one life where there could be ten, but how can one be selfish with respect to non-existing persons? How is it different from someone being "selfish" and not having children, for example? And why wouldn't it apply to ourselves with our current lifespans? Why not, say, euthanize everyone at 30, and use the existing resources to sustain more short-lived people, if the number of people having lived is the metric?
It's more selfishly using the resources younger people can use. If you're eighty, I'd rather feed the eight year old. Until we move beyond resource constraints (lol) this is going to be a major effect of the rich being able to afford long lives AND food and the poor affording neither.
The only objective metric I can think of is that today, 80 is usually not an age at which a person can do much. But if we have technology that lets you live much longer, and people at 80 would be physically like, say, 20-year-old today, that goes away.
And, of course, the number of young people "in the pipeline" can be regulated by controlling birth rates.
One of the things that are necessary to attain the next level of civilization, or perish. Yes, achieving a post-scarcity industry/economy is also necessary, and goes hand-in-hand with sustainable immortality.
At a certain scale, those that don't have these technologies may be seen as primitive.
I suppose there'll some kinds of biologies where immortality won't be necessary, like a insect-like hive-mind species, where each member is more or less already a copy of each other, but in species that have concepts of individuality and value them, achieving immortality is inevitable.
Hell yes. Kids are grown. Fat life insurance policy. I can accept having a fatal heart attack under the right circumstances :) The slow, painful fade is the thing that scares me. It's better to "burn out, than fade away."
I am 100% confident that within the next two hundred years (baring some massive war, dark age, etc.) We will be able to use gene therapy to reduce cancer risk to negligible levels. We will probably even master the ability to program cells to do what we want... At which point all diseases where the body breaks down will likely be gone. That's not to say, we won't have issues regarding illness - just our bodies won't break down as quickly if at all.
If you try to keep it for yourself you can bet the population-at-large will be gunning for you (literally).
Global warming could cause some nasty food shortages.
Obviously you can't live your life in fear like that, but I think there's good reason to be more fearful or at least angry about cancer than something like a stroke/wreck.
The cynic in me assumes that with children and a spouse, you're most likely too busy filling out forms and applications that ensure that they will not be screwed over by insurance companies and medical providers.
Being a defensive driver can drastically change your odds of being killed by some random yahoo. Further, the kind of car you drive can make a significant difference and improvements in car design are largely responsible for a huge reduction in fatalities.
Remember, our dealing with V^2 and slow reaction time so a 50MPH car has half the energy of a 70MPH car.
For what it's worth, we have also drastically reduced exposure to carcinogens for most people.
Getting older doesn't increase your changes of getting in a car accident.
1: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...
I beg to differ.
> In 2012, there were almost 36 million licensed drivers ages 65 and older in the United States.1 Driving helps older adults stay mobile and independent. But the risk of being injured or killed in a motor vehicle crash increases as you age. http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/older_adult_drivers/
Well. We evolved to be a collection of cells. Before, we were unicellular organisms, fighting against other organisms for resources and ultimately, survival.
Some cells just decide to revert back to the old ways. I'd say it's a form of evolution, one that's pruned by natural selection, when the host organism dies.