Ah, but the gist of the question is, for many people, on what is and is not humane. So again we need further definition of terms.
Am I glad that my family’s medical history predicts a 99.something % probability of dying before getting dementia? Oh hell yes.
Do I understand wanting to die because you’re tired of living? Not currently, although I was very close to commiting suicide once. I do think we need better mental healthcare in general, including for old people.
Cases in between? Give me the details and I’ll give you my answer.
Careful with that projection, you might hit someone.
Have a read of Terry Pratchett’s writings about his Dementia. He was suffering from it, knew what was wrong with him and hated the whole business. He had written an Advance Directive. That can be done by anyone: basically if X, then Y. Wether the doctors are able to follow your instructions depends on the laws in that country. But at least your family will know what you would say if you could.
Dementia is a group of diseases / conditions. Kind of like death, there is so much grief for families and patients. But the grief just goes on and on unbearably.
Death for me thank you!
I have looked after many people with various types of dementia. The emotions are still there, and a LOT of the emotions are painful bewilderment, distress at not knowing how to do something like get dressed.
As a night shift nurse; patients knew they could trust me, and would cry on my shoulder, night after night after night. Grieving that their family and friends had abandoned them. Whilst still putting on a brave front for these strangers ( family) that would visit during the days.
edit: >> Therefore freezing patients when they first develop dementia is the rational treatment to try. Convince me otherwise<<
1 Usually by the time dementia is diagnosed it has progressed quite a long way. 2 who is going to pay for the process of making you a new body? or do you expect someone to donate one ?
When I used the word “humane”, I just meant that sufficient drugs should be made available, or possibly an administered IV - such as putting animals to sleep. Instead of expecting a loved one to shoot or smother you.
We’ve asked my 3 kids to make sure we are dead before we get as bad as my MIL was. 2 of my 3 kids have said they would help us out. The 3d said it was not right for us to ask her to kill us.
I’m a pretty strong advocate of ostensibly mentally and emotionally stable people being able to determine what they do with their bodies - from modification, to abortion and - yes, suicide.
I’d encourage anyone to listen to his lectureon the subject that he did for the BBC some years before he died. It was delivered by his friend Sir Tony Robinson (yup…Baldrick is a knight of the realm and Blackadder isn’t…go figure!) It is wise and deep and perceptive, just as you’d expect.
One comment that stuck with me was Terry saying that if he knew he had the option of a easy death at a time of his choosing then it would let him live the life he had left. He didn’t even need to take up that option but knowing that he could would be a great comfort.
That’s absurd and you shouldn’t make it about me. A society that can restore the damage done by the freezing and preservation (basically there are preservation methods that kill the cells but stop freezing damage, freezing doesn’t directly kill the cells but rips them up which kills them, better options are maybe possible) can fix this.
“Donate” a body? What are you smoking? If you can repair a frozen brain you’ll know enough about biology to just make one. Probably not really a human body, probably more like a life support system that is itself immobile and contains live human organs made by cloning. (liver, immune cells, pumps for heart/lungs)
The patient would remotely control a robotic surrogate linked to electrodes in their brain.
Or a better way would be you scan their brain into a computer, this solves an enormous amount of technical problems.
So, the corpsicles come back as ghosts within machines?
I’m guessing it would take more than a desktop computer to maintain a human consciousness. I’m guessing it would take a supercomputer, maybe one better than we have now. Does anyone have a better estimate?
I’m guessing it would still cost a bunch to make millions of supercomputers.
Maybe robots could build them, but that will take them off all those other jobs they have to do to maintain a society of such wealth.
Who knows. If costs continue their present trend a bandaid at a hospital will cost $1000 and nobody will be able to afford anything. On the other hand, it is self evident that the “computer” a patient - not a corpsicle if you freeze em correctly, be respectful - used originally wasn’t really all that expensive. If nature can make brains relatively cheaply, so can we.
Do you know what happens to all those patients you just let die and wheel out? Yeah, their odds are zero. And their insurance paid your organization $100,000+ dollars for the priviledge.
If you properly freeze someone, are their odds zero? No they aren’t. With reasonable guesses about how nanotechnology or future automation might go, are their odds over 10%? I think so. Are they 100% or even above 80%? No, of course not.
Are 10% (an informed guess) odds better than zero? Surgeons take those risks all the time.
In fact, every patient who you have in the ICU who underwent CPR has what, a 3% chance?
Surgeons don’t operate at 90% mortality most of the time. Yes, it happens “all the time” in that over the nation someone is frequently in need of desperate life-saving surgery, but in general, even for major surgeries, mortality is less than 10% (most often, less than 1%).
Advanced dementia is the same as being dead, for any meaningful definition of being alive, aside from the maintenance costs.
You can’t relate to loved ones, you can’t learn new things, you can’t enjoy so much of what life has to offer. No point in keeping the carcass alive.
When I wrote my advanced medical directive / living will, I actually put clauses in to the effect of “if my mind is gone, don’t do anything to keep me alive. No screenings, no heroic treatments, etc.”
Of course, if I were in the early stages of dementia, aware enough that I might be able to make the rational decision to end things, I’d still be in a position of having something to live for. By the time I’d deteriorated enough that this was no longer the case, I would not be able to make that decision.
I can 't answer because I don’t think I know what it like to have dementia. How will know when it is advanced? Do people with advanced dementia always know it?
There was once a sick joke about Alzheimers not being so bad, because you meet new interesting people every day and the people you don’t like all leave you alone. Maybe there is some truth to that.
I’ve done volunteer work in nursing homes when I was younger, and did witness many with dementia. Extremely sad - and, it’s worth mentioning that many/most?! that have this illness are no longer able to go to the bathroom, bathe, and in many cases eat without assistance. Truly horrific.
I would definitely rather die than get to this point.
No, there isn’t. The people you don’t like will change day to day, and some of those people will be the ones feeding you, bathing you, toileting you, etc. And when it gets far enough, there isn’t a brain there to be interested in anything.
I hate this sort of thinking, that Alzheimer’s and other dementias are no big deal because hey, who wouldn’t like to forget some things, huh? Yuk yuk.
And for some people, the new ones they meet every day get mistaken for their brothers-in-law and assaulted with deadly intent. As it happened to a friend of mine who looks a lot like his maternal uncles. The father “recognized” Miguel - but not as his son. And the old man had been a farm worker all his life: he was small but strong, and trying to kill.
First-hand exposure in several family instances coupled with my work in a nursing home, add to which a painful and frightening face to face encounter at Carnegie Hall backstage with Glenn Campbell during his Farewell Tour, guarantees a quick response I’ll never veer away from.
Suicide early on. Sorry, Dearly Beloved™ of mine, but better to remember me Cartooniverse than me the beshitted vegetable, violent and empty.