Ezekiel J. Emanuel, director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the US National Institutes of Health, writes at The Atlantic that there is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. "It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic." Emanuel says that he is isn't asking for more time than is likely nor foreshortening his life but is talking about the kind and amount of health care he will consent to after 75. "Once I have lived to 75, my approach to my health care will completely change. I won’t actively end my life. But I won’t try to prolong it, either." Emanuel says that Americans seem to be obsessed with exercising, doing mental puzzles, consuming various juice and protein concoctions, sticking to strict diets, and popping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to cheat death and prolong life as long as possible. "I reject this aspiration. I think this manic desperation to endlessly extend life is misguided and potentially destructive. For many reasons, 75 is a pretty good age to aim to stop."
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday September 23 2014, @03:28PM
From TFA:
This sounds to me like he considers efforts to keep yourself in good shape as an attempt to prolong your life instead of accepting it as a way to improve health for the lifetime you have.
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @04:18PM
That's his "American immortality," keeping an 80-year-old body performing like a 60-year-old. The whole manifesto is based on the thesis that medicine has increased the quantity of life without any meaningful change in quality of life. From TFA:
You can keep the body alive longer, but exercise and mental puzzles don't actually keep you any healthier into old age. I suspect he would differentiate between behaviors that actively improve your health and passive avoidance of those that harm your health (ie: regular, vigorous exercise: immortality; not eating yourself to obesity or diabetes: common sense)
If you google "How to live to 100," you'll get all kinds of low calorie, vigorous exercise, anti-oxidant advice from people in their 30s-50s. If you ask people over 100, they'll say things like "A glass of red wine every day" and "A plate of bacon every day." If you ask people who study centenarians, they'll say "Community involvement" and "good attitude." It's striking, to me, the difference between people telling you how to become immortal, and people who have actually made it. Maybe the most telling thing is that those centenarians don't seem to mind that they can't walk as fast as their grandkids, can't balance a bicycle, or remember the password to their Yahoo! (much less recognize when everyone else has left Yahoo for facebook or twitter), all of which seem very important to Dr. Emanuel.