JohnnyDoe said:Medicine is not mandatory: refusing treatment is a legitimate choice. You are free to live fast, take avoidable risks, reject screening, ignore prevention.
it's not A or B - there is a spectrum - I'm not talking about refusing, rather about freedom of choice which is taken from us to an alarming extent
JohnnyDoe said:But there are two distinctions:
First, quality of life is not measured by age, as you said. It is measured by functional capacity, cognition, mobility, independence, absence of chronic pain. Modern medicine has massively improved those variables. Life expectancy in Europe 1700s was roughly 35 to 40 years. Today it is around 80. If you have a chance to live well until 80, why ignore it and live bad until 40?
Second, the “feedback loop” argument is partially correct but incomplete. Yes, some diseases are more visible because we survive long enough to develop them. Cancer and neurodegeneration rise with age. But it's not medicine that is creating disease: it's the extended lifespan that reveals biological limits.
fair enough, this is more precise
JohnnyDoe said:At the same time, smallpox was eradicated. Maternal mortality collapsed. Childhood mortality dropped from double digits to below 1 percent in developed countries.
we are on a thin ice here but I will say it directly... all this is not unconditionally "good", definitely not good always and for everyone
there are surprising consequence - one example for all - the fact we mastered c-section saved millions of lives... and also "modified" the human race as more and more women give birth to daughters (that would die otherwise) that will not be able to give birth without c-section themselves, heredity is a big enemy and we can't work around natural selection
I'll leave it here though
JohnnyDoe said:You are free to opt out of medical progress.
personally I don't want to opt-out (I find that foolish) but I advocate for absolute freedom of choice, no exceptions
JohnnyDoe said:What does not follow is the claim that it has no objective value, or that outcomes are arbitrary because “there is no best practice”.
those who claim the right to not only define lege artis but also to enforce the application to masses are pure evil
JohnnyDoe said:In trauma care, sepsis management, myocardial infarction etc, there absolutely are best practices. Survival curves prove it.
Quality of life is subjective, biology is not.
yes, acute medicine made a huge (impressive) progress... just like aeronautics, construction, software, production of energy... all that has an impact on our SUBJECTIVE quality of life