When "Dead Enough" Becomes a Metric
stylman.substack.com
When "Dead Enough" Becomes a Metric
Jessica Zitter, the palliative-care physician, calls this tendency to always add another machine, or another drug, the end-of-life conveyor belt. “We’re always trying to do more and more and more to people, when maybe we shouldn’t,” Bigham said. “The overarching problem here is that we have this fear of letting people die,” he explained.
Clayton Dalton • How ECMO Is Redefining Death | the New Yorker
The problem with medicine and the institutions it has spawned for the care of the sick and the old is not that they have had an incorrect view of what makes life significant. The problem is that they have had almost no view at all. Medicine’s focus is narrow. Medical professionals concentrate on repair of health, not sustenance of the soul. Yet—and... See more
Atul Gawande • Being Mortal
The survival rate for what he’s worried about is near 100% if caught early. That’s the part that hits hardest. The system isn’t failing due to lack of knowledge. It’s failing in the logistics, in the architecture, in the response time. Delay is the enemy, but delay is all the system offers.