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Shelf Life

From solong's Blog

in Member Blogs

by solong

4 Comments

	Shelf Life Nov 21, 2007
Today a very strange idea occurred to me. What if human beings had a shelf life? We live a certain number of years and then we die, or kill ourselves to be accurate. Some of you are probably thinking I don?t want to live or something. Not true. I don?t want to live past my shelf life. There has been a lot of talk about what we are going to do to fix social security. A lot of talk, but not many workable solutions. There is a lot of talk about our insurance problem, too. Michael Moore?s ?Sicko? has brought the whole insurance industry under long overdue scrutiny. That doesn?t necessarily mean a solution is afoot. This has stirred something in me. We are trying to do two opposing things at the same time. I?m pretty sure that will never work. On one hand, advances in medicine are allowing us to live longer. We survive illnesses that 30 years ago would most certainly have been fatal. On the other hand, we are trying to pay for sick, elderly people to have access to procedures and medicines that they cannot afford. We can?t afford it either, it turns out. Maybe at some point we should just decide to stop living. I do not want to live beyond my healthy years. In other words, when I cannot drive a car to get where I need to go, I will be considering the quality of my life and thinking about what I want for myself. I have expressed the thought to family members that I do not want to live if I cannot communicate with them any more. It?s important to say that now, while I still can. I don?t think I will want to hang around waiting for death, when I have no more independence or when my health declines to the point of no return. In this country, we give 83 year old people new knee joints. That costs a lot of money. Medicare pays for it. I think there?s something wrong with that. Not that I don?t sympathize with the fact that elderly people have painful joints, but at what point does it become indulgent to replace them? We cannot afford to do everything we are doing with medicine right now. I personally want my insurance to pay for whatever I feel I need to be healthy and active, but then I?m still paying for private insurance. Do I still get to call the shots when the public is paying my medical insurance? Yes, I will be paying premiums, but that is but a drop in the enormous bucket. Taxes will pay the bulk of the medical bills. There is something perverted about our unwillingness to think about allowing people to choose when to end their lives. We have this puritanical squeamishness about ?assisted suicide? and no qualms at all about letting senior citizens quietly starve or go months without electricity or heat. We care about life, but only in the abstract it seems. -- Edited by solong at 11/21/2007 7:52 PM
Posted by solong Nov 21, 2007 7:43 PM EST Report Abuse

4 Comments


	skordamou, your points are well taken. I mixed two different ideas together in one blog, probably not very coherently. I understand where it might seem that I don't value the elderly. However, having lost my mother this year, I have a perspective born of a lot of pain seeing the elderly in a nursing home setting. It is something that I would never want for myself. What I had believed in the abstract about the elderly, I experienced with my mother. That started me rethinking about what I believe is quality, for me. I want to choose my own "use by" date. As for the medicare, social security and insurance mess, I have no faith in any of our politicians to fix it. I just know that what we are trying to do right now, isn't working. Thanks for your thoughts.


	Solong, I read this last night and it has stayed with me to the point where I am compelled top respond. I may rant a bit, so I want you know that my anger is directed at the issue, not all towards you, fellow monadista! It may sound radical, but I believe that the health and well being of all individuals in a society is far more important than assuring that the uber-rich maintain their tax cuts or that CEOs continue to earn hundreds of times the salaries of their workers. We have the money, we just need to cap obscene earnings and distribute the wealth a bit more equitably. We need to begin to understand that it is to everyone?s advantage when a society takes care of its own. Maybe instead of lowering taxes we need to raise taxes- but make sure that the burden is distributed so that the over-class pays its fair share. It may sound like a liberated viewpoint but allowing- or sanctioning-elderly suicide fosters beliefs and behaviors that fragment a healthy society. First of all, it brings our human community down to a dollars and cents level. The ?society as business? model is currently a popular form of governance, but the books are often balanced at the expense of the poorest and weakest. We must remember that the goal of a capitalist business is to accrue as much profit as possible. Society should have as its goal the health and well-being of ALL of its members, and this should supersede other concerns, lf an otherwise healthy 83 year old is not allowed knee replacement, why should the society pay to save an unhealthy child that may require years of medical care (and still not survive to adulthood)? This logic could also be used to regulate individual lifestyle choices such as choice of foods, amount of exercise, etc. This is a slippery slope indeed. Perhaps even more detrimental to healthy human community is the notion that elderly life is somehow ?more expendable?. The American people have bought into advertising?s cult of youth, and to me, this is heartbreaking. In much of world, we find that age is not something to fear and scorn, but is a welcomed stage of life marked by respect for an individual?s accumulated wisdom. In the U.S. we are the spoiled babies of the world, and it is time we grew up and realized that we can?t all be rich and famous. But if take our energy and passion and creatively apply those towards forging a better, more equitable society, we just may find that it is possible to have many good things, including health and long life. I believe this is so.


	Exactly right, no easy answers. I was speaking for myself and not suggesting that we put people out of their misery whether they ask us to or not. It is really an argument in favor of each of us getting to choose our own shelf life. Americans want everything, all at the same time. The fact that we expect the government to pay for expensive procedures, yet can't or won't fully fund Medicare is but one example. Personally, I think quality of life trumps all. But, that's just me. Thanks for your comments.


	Interesting thoughts, solong, but no easy answers. My problem with the "shelf life" idea, is that if an old person should die when they can't drive and need a new hip joint, why should a young one live if he's unemployed and needs new teeth? How do we know when it's the end, and not just another bump in the road? There are people who spend their entire lives, from cradle to grave, struggling on a level that senior citizens getting hip replacements can't even begin to fathom, and we don't suggest that they should kill themselves to ease our financial situation.

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