Why one prominent doctor (Dr. Ezekial Emmanuel) says, "I hope to die at 75"

[MADem]

92. I can only respond by asking you to remember this exchange as you approach your

sixties and seventies. If DU is still here, come back to this thread and tell us if you still feel the same way. I'll try to hang on to read your comments!

I think your doom-and-gloom scenarios are premature. You quite likely won't die of AIDS, like people in the eighties did--that's pretty much a "chronic condition" nowadays, not the death sentence it used to be--and a rapid death sentence it was, too. You have a much better chance of being cured of cancer than anyone diagnosed back when I was your age. I have friends who survived polio, and were debilitated by it as children, or are feeling the residual effects in their old age. Plenty of kids didn't make it. You'll never see that kind of thing, lucky you.

Every year, medicine makes advances, cures are found, stem cell research is opening a lot of doors. Medical QOL is better --even with the patchwork system we work under today--than it was fifty years ago. And fifty years ago, it was leaps and bounds better than it was fifty or a hundred years before that.

And despite the "crappy" food, I don't even want to THINK about food standards a hundred years ago. There basically were none. FDA? You had your nose--sniff it, if it smells bad, don't eat it! Or cover it in spices and take your chances!

More and more stuff in my produce aisle at my plain old grocer is organic--and the prices for organic produce are coming down, too. Fifty years ago, everything was sprayed with DDT (see Rachel Carson's Silent Spring) and there was no "organic" unless your old uncle was growing peppers and tomatoes in the back yard that the DDT didn't hit (and not every kid had an uncle who did that).

And you and your peers are the future--you're going to have to begin to step up and take charge. The older generations won't be here forever, even if they do live a bit longer, and it'll be your turn to make the decisions about the future of the generations that come after you.

It will be up to your generation to decide what's important to you as time marches on; every generation gets a turn at being the Boss! I wish you guys the best and hope that you will prioritize wisely! Maybe you'll decide that higher taxes are worth it to provide more public services. Maybe those who have more will finally be persuaded by your generation to pay more, for a change. That's something I'd like to live long enough to see~!