Do you wish we could 'turn back the clock' 50 years regarding medical care?

Question

Vaccinations aside, regarding medicine's ability to prolong life artificially, through respirators and intense medical care for the very ill and brain-dead--is modern-day 'advanced medical care' worth it?

Egypt's former PM Sharon has been hospitalized in a coma since 2005--3 whole years. His doctors chose the 'wrong' drug or wrong dose in 2005, and his condition became much worse. But he's still alive, in a brain-dead coma.

Is it worth it? Would you want this for yourself? Yes, in the US most if not all states allow 'Living Wills,' but living wills don't usually act very fast--you're still likely to run up $10,000s or $100,000s in medical bills before anyone can 'pull the plug' on you. I'd like to leave something to my children, but in the US? Hospitals can even take your homes. I've seen it happen.

How do you feel? Is prolonging life worth it? Do you ever wish US could turn back the clock on medical care?

Answer 1

If you were to turn the clock back 50 years for medical care cancer would be a death sentence for nearly everyone who got it. Most children with luekaemia would die , whilst now 90% survive. There would be no portable respirators and people would be confined to life in an iron lung. There would be no heart or kidney transplants, just the occasional kidney transplant    There would very few antibiotics available.

There would be little cosmetic surgery, basic dentistry and more limited anaesthetics. More people would die younger of heart attacks and strokes and the cure for tb would be lying in isolation hospitals for months.

Premature babies born betwwen 24 - 32 weeks would die rather than survive as there were no computerised incubators.

Nothing is ever perfect but healthcare overall has greatly improved and being ae living longer and staying fit and active for longer.

There are times when someone is incurably ill and have no quality of life when prolonging life seems cruel, but turning back the clock is not the answer.

Answer 2

You mean you want a world with incurable cancers, without Botox, without advanced antibiotics and with the only over the counter pain relief coming from aspirin?  You also seem to forget that 50 years ago ulcers were cured not with an antibiotic, but with a surgical operation.  Genetic cures weren't possible back then; neither were heart stents making heart bypass operations less necessary.  You also couldn't put a surgical tool into the heart via a small incision in the thigh and so speed up recovery time.  Then there is the invention of the colonoscopy which is impossible without fiber optics.  I had a bladder inspection in 1977 that was incredibly painful and done in the hospital under general anesthesia.  I had another one done a few years ago with a fiber optic as an out patient with no anesthesia and no pain.

The problem of having people on life support is a long term one, or haven’t you heard of an iron lung (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_lung).  Tubal intubation was first done in 1952, in Denmark so iron lungs were still being used not that long ago.  A person was stuck on their back inside of a metal tube to assist their breathing.  This meant operations like heart bypass and lung transplants were impossible.  ÃƒÂ¢Ã‚€ÂœThe first heart transplanted into a human occurred in 1964 at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_trans...  Other organ transplants like on the liver, kidneys and lungs followed.  So you would ignore all of those.  You would still end up with people stuck on their back unable to do anything except speak; not too far removed from a vegetative state.  Millions of people have been saved by simple intubation and restoring the oxygen supply to the lungs.  People who otherwise would have suffered brain damage and either died or ended up in a severe vegetative state.

Yes, there are more people surviving severe damage today, one of the biggest problems in Iraq and Afghanistan is that more people with traumatic brain injuries are surviving battle damage.  Some of those people recover, but many only partially recover; still half a life can be better than no life at all.

We have the technology to tell if a person is brain dead and unable to ever recover consciousness, but now and then a person who was hopeless suddenly gets better, for no explainable reason.  The famous case of Terry Schiavo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schia... stretched on for years with no improvement.  When she was finally allowed to die it was years after her brain all but died.

We don’t know what kind of feelings or awareness a person in a coma has, often they don’t remember anything, sometimes they dream and occasionally they respond to the voices of others.  There are a lot of things that are still a lot of mysteries about comas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coma).

Then there is the new issue of those with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, 50 years ago their condition was hopeless and permanent (until death), now they do have some hope of meaningful recovery.

What to do with someone who is in pain and the long lingering death of cancer, or what to do with a person who no longer recognizes their own name and finally your issue those in a vegetative state is a thorny question.  The right to life folks say as long as there is life there is hope, but they ignore the quality of that life.  Personally, I made a living will so that if I do end up in a vegetative state my next of kin can release me.  Few people don’t plan for that though (and yes they have a notarized copy of the document) so when the issue comes up it is a painful decision for their families and it can even become a public issue as in the Schiavo case.  We need laws that allow for the cessation of life after it becomes meaningless, but like pornography I can’t define meaningless too well, but I will know it if I see it.  Suicide is an attractive option to too many people and physician assisted suicide should be heavily controlled, but the option needs to be there.

I had a friend who had an old dog, near the end of its life the dog couldn’t walk, its hind legs were too weak, it was in pain from the arthritis and when it went to the bathroom it always soiled itself.  Its life was a living h**l, but he still wagged his tail when my friend came to pet him.  He finally did die of natural causes, I would have put the dog down earlier, but I hadn’t grown up with the dog; he wasn’t a member of my family, I don’t know if I could have made the same decision then.  Like many subjects the topic is relative to those involved.

Murder is a crime, but killing someone isn’t always murder, it can be an accident or self defense.  It takes someone with the guidelines of the law, but the liberty of the law to make the decision.  In Texas if you shoot a man breaking into your home then it is considered self defense and after a quick investigation to make sure you told the truth the case never comes to trial.  In Alaska though the person could just be trying to come in and get warm so unless they come more than 6’ into the home you can’t attack them in self defense.  When a man is in a car crash, he lives and his child dies; despite all his grief he is still charged with involuntary manslaughter.  Most of the time the case is ruled an accident and he never has to go to trial, but that is only because the legal system has the liberty to make those decisions.

The medical profession has fewer liberties, yet the issue is still a life and death one.  A doctor must do their best to keep the patient alive, even if that life is in a vegetative coma or a life of a few months in intense agony like with cancer.  Both cases are usually hopeless, there is a very small chance that they can spontaneously get better, but in the huge majority of cases there is no hope.  Yet the doctor doesn’t have the freedom to let the patient die.

In the case of Terry Schiavo her feeding tube was cut and she died a prolonged death of death due to starvation and dehydration; is that a mercy.  How much of that death did she feel?  All of it, but how much she recognized is pretty small if any, an autopsy showed that her brain was long dead.  With cancer patients the drug of last resort is morphine, morphine handles strong pain, but it has the side effect of depressing the patient’s breathing reflex.  So there is a point where the patient can take too much morphine and fade quietly into death, losing consciousness and quietly suffocating to death.  Some doctors allow this to happen, but even that is technically illegal.  The doctor doesn’t have the freedom to make that decision they have to put it into the patient’s hands or the hands of their caregiver.  They tell the caregiver or the patient that there is a point of death and that they should not approach it and leave them to determine how much pain relief to give.  At some point the needed pain relief will surpass the point of breathing reflex suppression.  So do you relieve the pain or keep the patient in intense agony for another week or month until the pain causes their body to give up?

Society won’t give doctors the ability to make these decisions.  In my case I specify that a second opinion that I won’t have a meaningful recovery is required before I can be allowed to die.  I am sure my family won’t let me die when there is a chance of me getting better, but there is a small chance that a doctor might.  These so called “angels of mercy” kill patients that otherwise would survive.  The patients who died after hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans had their doctors accused of being “angels of mercy.”  The case died and the doctors were cleared, but it still put a cloud over them and the painful decision that they had to make in a hopeless situation was horrible.  I like to think that if I was in that situation I would do the best I could to keep the patients alive, but there comes a point where there is no hope.  I would rather a trained professional make that decision and have the liberty to make that decision then to force my family to do it.  Terry Schiavo left no living will and so she spent 7 years as good as dead, but barely alive in the hospital.  It was a slow decline and we can’t say exactly when she mentally died or when she just became unresponsive.  But, once I become unresponsive with no hope of recovery I don’t want to hang on afterwards for an unlimited amount of time in limbo.

As a side note I also decided to donate my body to medical science so that something good can come out of my death.  Even if the corpse is mangled and damaged it can be used in decomposition studies.  I have a chronic illness and take a lot of medication so I am not sure if my organs are worth donating, but if I donate my body and a medical student uses it in their anatomy class then I could have saved dozens or hundreds of lives by that simple choice.

No I don’t want to r****d the advance of medical science by 50 years to make more people who are in vegetative states die.  I want doctors and my family to have the freedom to make that decision, if needed before it turns into a horror show like the Schiavo case did.

Answer 3

Time can not be turned back. So it's better to talk of the present and look for the future. Medical care has not progressed as to it's expectations in this 21st century as it had in the 20th century during the first couple of decades. Once considered to be valuable science, it has became more of a luxury and multi-billion dollar corporate giants have turned it into a monopoly, not much different than diamond merchants' trade. Bias point of views from religious and social aspects are added to keep the matter at bay while these very same social aspects are the reason why the American Continent must attend the clock of medical care.

Good Luck !

Answer 4

In a word, no.

No heart bypasses. Most premature babies would die.

Minimal antibiotics.

No joint replacements.

No pacemakers.

No cardiac stents.

Yeah, I want to live in the Stone Age.