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Comment by birdyrooster | Hacker News Reader

No one wants to do chemotherapy or have tumor excisions, but you need to or you suffer a worse fate.

Chemotherapy is actually an excellent analogy. We don't give chemotherapy to everyone just because a few people might have undetected cancer.

Cancer does not spread rapidly through air. Also, chemotherapy is done after you get cancer. It is not a preventative measure.

It is preventative though, it prevents the cancer from progressing and metastasizing.

It is not preventative in the sense that you can't ask millions of people to get chemotherapy just in case.

It’s a reductio ad absurdism, I’m not saying everyone has potential cancer, I’m saying that sometimes protecting your health isn’t convenient or fun. The idea is that it is temporary.

Not a good analogy. Many doctors chose to bypass chemotherapy and tumor excisions. Chances are the gain is a handful of years of utmost misery. If that.

https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2014/05/How-do...

> “dying patients continue to be hospitalized and subjected to ineffective therapies that erode their quality of life and their personal dignity” while doctors “have a striking personal preference to forego high-intensity care for themselves at the end-of-life and prefer to die gently and naturally.”

I’m not good at analogies I guess. I’ll come up with a new one.

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