That's the world we live in today; we spend tens of thousands of pounds keeping cancer patients alive, when the same money would save twenty lives in the Third World.
We live in a world where we do that, yes.
If you want to debate the exact morality of the amount we spend on cancer care, I might be up for that, but it's a tricky subject that affects both friends and family, and so is hard to do objectively. However, I do see a qualitative difference between keeping someone alive using technology that is currently known to work, and storing someone who's long-term dead using technology that might very well not work at all. So I don't accept that the world I described in my reply is the world we live in today, even if it shares some features.
We also live in a country - though sadly not a world - where evidence-based cost/benefit analysis is seen as important in determining which treatments to make generally available to people who otherwise couldn't afford them on the NHS. I think this is a good thing, and makes the world a bit less like the one I described in my reply.
(Again, speaking personally, when I get cancer, I want the miniumum spent on me to let me die in bearable pain. I have no problem at all with the many people - including my parents and a couple of good friends - who make other choices, but that is mine.)
I'm hoping the future will do better on that axis, just as I think we do better today than we did in the past.
We may do better in the future, but I think one of the signs of us doing better is that we'll regard the idea of cryonics with a sort of amused horror. I'm also not convinced that we will continue to make progress in this area if resources become scarce, as I expect they will unless we manage to, say, crack sustainable nuclear fusion, but that's a rant I've had before, and I know you're more optimistic than I am on that subject (I also hope you're right).
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 11:26 am (UTC)We live in a world where we do that, yes.
If you want to debate the exact morality of the amount we spend on cancer care, I might be up for that, but it's a tricky subject that affects both friends and family, and so is hard to do objectively. However, I do see a qualitative difference between keeping someone alive using technology that is currently known to work, and storing someone who's long-term dead using technology that might very well not work at all. So I don't accept that the world I described in my reply is the world we live in today, even if it shares some features.
We also live in a country - though sadly not a world - where evidence-based cost/benefit analysis is seen as important in determining which treatments to make generally available to people who otherwise couldn't afford them on the NHS. I think this is a good thing, and makes the world a bit less like the one I described in my reply.
(Again, speaking personally, when I get cancer, I want the miniumum spent on me to let me die in bearable pain. I have no problem at all with the many people - including my parents and a couple of good friends - who make other choices, but that is mine.)
I'm hoping the future will do better on that axis, just as I think we do better today than we did in the past.
We may do better in the future, but I think one of the signs of us doing better is that we'll regard the idea of cryonics with a sort of amused horror. I'm also not convinced that we will continue to make progress in this area if resources become scarce, as I expect they will unless we manage to, say, crack sustainable nuclear fusion, but that's a rant I've had before, and I know you're more optimistic than I am on that subject (I also hope you're right).