Re: Good News about America's Top Killers

From: James Stein (NoSpamForMeThanks_at_si.rr.com)
Date: 01/21/05 

Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 14:33:12 GMT

"PF Riley" <pfriley@watt-not.com> wrote in message
news:fi31v09lchduekr4fmmlt0159v4dluutvj@4ax.com...
> On 20 Jan 2005 14:07:41 -0800, "R. Weiser" <weiser@acsh.org> wrote:
>
>>Yes - obviously SOMETHING is going to be the leading cause of death.
>>The point with these stats, though, is that the death rates are for
>>those *age 85 and under.* So reducing these particular death rates from
>>cancer and heart disease would mean preventing earlier deaths (before
>>age 85) so that people are dying at an older age (of these causes, or
>>any others).
>
> You realize, of course, that not everyone would agree with you that
> our ultimate goal is to get everyone to live to be as old as they
> possibly can, right?

The goal of any medical professional is to allow the longest and most
comfortable life possible for his patients. While some medical professionals
believe in "mercy killing", that is simply because they value the quality of
life over the length of life; they still value primarily those two
qualities. Certainly other people have other goals - teen angst in specific
loves to rave about how we're oh-so-stupid for trying to make everyone live
longer - but those other people usually are not practicing members of any
medical field.

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