Dr Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, said that cancer allowed people to say goodbye and prepare for death and was therefore preferable to sudden death, death from organ failure or “the long, slow death from dementia”.
Referring to the writings of surrealist Luis Buñuel, Dr Smith said that cancer was the closest thing to the filmmaker’s professed wish for “a slower death”.
“You can say goodbye, reflect on your life, leave last messages, perhaps visit special places for a last time, listen to favourite pieces of music, read loved poems, and prepare, according to your beliefs, to meet your maker or enjoy eternal oblivion,” Dr Smith wrote in a blog published for the BMJ, a journal he edited until 2004.
“This is, I recognise, a romantic view of dying, but it is achievable with love, morphine, and whisky. But stay away from overambitious oncologists, and let’s stop wasting billions trying to cure cancer, potentially leaving us to die a much more horrible death,” he wrote.
Spanish surrealist Luis Bunuel (Getty Images)Dr Smith, who also worked as a TV doctor for the BBC and TV-AM for six years, is now chair of both the medical records company Patients Know Best and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research.
In his blog, he argues that a quick, sudden death – despite being most people’s choice – can be hard on bereaved relatives and friends, particularly where there are unresolved issues in a relationship, while organ failure can leave people “far too much in hospital and in the hands of doctors,” he wrote.
A death following dementia, he writes “may be the most awful as you are slowly erased”.
Buñuel himself, who died in Mexico City of pancreatic cancer at the age of 83 in 1983, wrote that while he was “not afraid of death” he was “afraid of dying alone in a hotel room, with my bags open and a shooting script on the night table. I must know whose fingers will close my eyes.”
Cancer remains one of the most common causes of mortality in the UK, accounting for nearly one in three deaths. Last year [2014] a major milestone was reached in the development of treatments when Cancer Research UK announced that half of cancer sufferers now survive the disease for 10 years or more.
That fellow sounds like the Perfect ObamaCare Doctor to me.
ReplyDelete>>>Dying of cancer is the “best death” and we should “stop wasting billions trying to cure” it, a leading doctor has said.<<<
DeleteThe Jury is in.
Verdict: Bone cancer is the way to go.
The type of prostate cancer I had migrates to the bones and you end up dying of bone cancer.
DeleteAs for me, I'll happily take the radiation treatments, thank you, Doctor.
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ReplyDeleteAnd a Happy New Year to you, too.
:o(
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You are going to die, of something.
ReplyDeleteThe cost benefit analysis has to be made, since it is society that is footing the bill.
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ReplyDeleteNot by a bunch of unelected and anonymous pencil-pushers whose only responsibility is to the bottom line as we have coming up in the current Obamacare law.
Sarah Palin may have been slightly hyperbolic in calling it a 'death panel' but the description in reality was rather apt.
Hopefully, the GOP will put a leash on it before 2017 when it will be too late.
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Who dos it now, Legionnaire Q?
DeleteWho elects the insurance company that decides whether or not to fund treatments?
And who decides for those that have no health insurance, without the provisions of 'RomneyCare 2.0'?
DeleteSeems to me that the decision has been made for those people, sans a "Death Panel".
Delete.
DeleteYou don't know that, rat, and yet you are commenting on health care? My. My.
My first suggestion is that you read up on the IPAB before commenting.
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Your suggestion will be noted and ignored, Legionnaire Q
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DeleteTime and again, Netanyahu coalition policies have rescued Hamas from deepening domestic unpopularity in Gaza, while doing for Hamas what Hamas could not manage to do on its own: weakening Israel – in this case, by causing Israelis to feel betrayed by, suspicious of, and despairing at the actions of their own government.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/.premium-1.634726
Dr Richard Smith , as least at the time he proclaimed this theory, has not died of cancer. The proposition struck me as preposterous and indicative of a person that has had no direct and personal experience with dying from cancer, but as a doctor, he has probably seen it happen to many others. That professional callousness usually has a very short shelf life when a physician discovers he is struck with an incurable disease.
ReplyDelete
DeleteAging is an incurable disease, at least at the present time.
I would agree that it is far more likely that a doctor, having convinced himself with the authority of the best experts in the field that he is indeed not going to survive the illness, will resort to the whisky and morphine route more promptly than a civilian.
ReplyDeleteMedical doctors almost invariably fall within the top three professions having the highest suicide rate. They are also 2-3 times more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs than the general population. Psychiatrists seem particularly vulnerable.
DeleteThe next time you have surgery, make sure everyone takes a drug test beforehand. If you visit a shrink, ask for whatever sheit is drinking.
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ReplyDeleteWhile above I mentioned that Sarah Palin's description of IPAB as a death panel was apt although kind of hyperbolic, that seems to be a case of the blind squirrel occasionally finding a nut.
I suspect anyone who has checked out the positions of Ezekiel Emanuel would conclude that Palin is a nutjob based on her claim during the Obamacare debate that 'Zeke' favored euthanasia. To me his positions seem well thought out and reasonable. Even his recent statement that given the current level of medicine in the US that 75 is the best age to die at least had a legitimate rationale behind it even if you disagree with it.
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http://www.columbian.com/news/2014/dec/31/us-stocks-see-sixth-straight-year-of-gains/
ReplyDeleteU.S. stocks see sixth straight year of gains
2014 was not as kind to oil, which was down 45 percent
NEW YORK — U.S. stocks ended a strong 2014 with moderate declines Wednesday.
Even with the losses, the Standard & Poor's 500 index finished the year up 11.4 percent, or 13.7 percent when dividends are included. It was the sixth straight year of gains for the stock market.
Oil, by contrast, had its worst annual performance since 2008, ending down 45 percent for 2014 after a sharp slump in the second half of the year.
The market's annual gain exceeded even the most optimistic forecasts made at the beginning of the year.
"It turned out to be a great year for U.S. economic growth, which got us higher corporate profits as well,"
said Cameron Hinds, regional chief investment officer for Wells Fargo Private Bank.
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ReplyDeleteEl Perdedor
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ReplyDeleteBack to the old "death panels," eh? :)
ReplyDeleteMan, ya gotta love it. :)
Oh well, with the price of eggs falling, I guess we have to have some sort of fallback disaster. :)
DeleteWhat does a pack of fags cost now? 6 dollars a pack and rising?
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Delete11,497 DJIA - 1JAN2000
Delete17,823 DJIA - 1JAN2015
Just over 3% annual compounded growth.
9,034. DJIA - 2JAN2009
17,823 DJIA 1JAN2015
We'll let allen calculate and announce the annual compounded growth rate.
Rest assured, it beats eggs.
{;-)
The Supply-Side Nightmare Scenario
DeleteAbundant labor, excess capital, and cheap money are here to stay.
The expanding savings accounts of an exploding middle class (Global) represent only one reason, among others, that cheap money is going to keep flowing. Exports are another, as in the past. In fact, in the five years since the financial crisis, the foreign-currency reserve holdings of emerging countries have more than doubled, according to the IMF.
Via extraordinary monetary-easing measures, the developed world's central banks have turned trillions of dollars of financial investments into so much cash that it is metaphorically bulging out of the pockets of banks and other investors.
Yet it is not getting lent and it is not getting invested in new capacity. Why?
In a nutshell, the reason that the enormous ocean of liquidity is not being deployed is that there is so much global supply and excess capacity of labor, plants, equipment, and goods and services relative to present demand that there is little reason for private-sector investment in the development of additional capacity to produce additional supply.
What we have on our hands is a supply-side nightmare scenario.
And, a Happy New Year to you, too.
ReplyDelete:)
29 Airstrikes, Overnight
According to latest statistics from The American Cancer Society’ cancer mortality in the U.S dropped 22 percent since 1991. The figure has been arrived at using information acquired between 2007 and 2011. The conclusions were published in two scientific journals: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians and Cancer Facts & Figures 2015.
ReplyDeleteThis decline of 22% signifies that an extra 1.5 million cancer patients survived the treatment. John Seffrin, PhD, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, said that these new statistics do provide a cause for celebration but there is still a lot of progress to be made in the fields of prevention and diagnosis.
Surf dude ditches watersports job on Costa Rica beach to become a jihadi hunter with Kurds fighting extremists in Syria
ReplyDeleteSurf instructor Dean Parker, 49, has joined the famous Lions of Rojava
The squad of foreign fighters is part of the Kurdish People's Protection Unit, known as the YPG, which is taking on Islamic State
From West Palm Beach, Florida, he had been living in Zancudo, Costa Rica
Seeing the plight of the Yazidi people moved him to take up arms
Says he 'heard God's call' to fight and has been training on the frontline
But he has vowed to surf in the Black Sea once ISIS is defeated
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2862608/American-grandfather-Dean-Parker-joins-Kurds-fight-ISIS-Syria-abandoning-idyllic-life-surf-instructor-Costa-Rica.html
The 49-year-old has swapped his job as a surf instructor in stunning Zancudo, Costa Rica, for frontline training in the war against terror group ISIS.
Re: We'll let allen calculate and announce the annual compounded growth rate.
ReplyDeleteRest assured, it beats eggs.
You are incorrect. The egg is unbeatable. Everyone should own a dozen.
Obviously, allen, you have never had meringue, or you would know that not only is the venerable egg beatable ...
DeleteIt can be whipped into a frenzy.
The numbers is what the numbers is.
DeleteAging is not a disease: senescence is genetically programmed. That is why the greatest improvement in the longevity of rodents done, to date, rely on gene manipulation. Whether it is a good idea to improve the life expectancy of rodents is a moral question open to debate.
ReplyDeleteAging is a genetic disease, allen, no doubt about that.
DeleteAnd everyone seems to have it!
Dis - ease by definition is an abnormality.
DeleteDeath is universal.
All living things typically expire within a predictable time frame. During the past century, human beings have been able to prolong the inevitable. Whether the quality of life justifies such intervention is the question posed by the author, I believe.
Absent cloning, I see no great leaps forward in life expectancy. As you may have noticed, even the recipients of artificial organs and animal tissue die within the expected norm.
The 'Rat Doctrine' continues to be successfully applied.
ReplyDeleteTwo Canadian fighter jets spent New Year’s Eve bombing militants’ positions in Iraq as part of a international airstrike campaign.
The Defence Department says that on Dec. 31, the two CF-18s struck ISIL fighting positions using precision-guided munitions.
The planes were acting in support of Iraqi security forces’ group operations west of Fallujah.
According to information posted by the American and Australian governments, the targets hit in that area were tactical units belong to the Islamic State.
Canadian jets bomb Iraqi targets said to be tactical Islamic State units
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadian-jets-bomb-iraqi-targets-said-to-be-tactical-islamic-state-units/article22262739/
Speaking of efficacious analgesics, heroin is hands down the best. It will cause addiction and kill the patient, but so will any morphine product -- less effectively.
ReplyDeleteElites, those being the only ones who could afford it, have used various opiates for millennia. Smoking or ingestion were the methods of introduction. As always, the upper 1% got all the really good stuff.
Gas is $1.90 / gal. in Memphis.
ReplyDeleteE85 is $0.74 / Gallon
Deletein Lowell, Mich.
Michigan Prices
Eggs
Deletespot price dozen large, Chicago 31 Dec 2014 -- wed price $1.3250
year ago -- $1.2850
The price of eggs is not going down. I can do this forever, thanks to the internet. Oh, BS may or may not be increasing.
Cash Prices, WSJ
I was going to say that aging was not a disease too, but allen beat me to it.
ReplyDeletePart of a life long process, done with grace it can have its own joys and bring its own new wisdoms.
The young - and the old - they are the ones that know that those in the fretful striving middle years have no idea what it's about.....
:)