From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com> Newsgroups: sci.med,sci.med.diseases.cancer Subject: Re: Good News about America's Top Killers Date: 21 Jan 2005 18:52:22 -0800 Message-ID: <1106362342.630157.255010@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> >>Well can you tell me just what in God's name are we SUPPOSED to die of?<< COMMENT: Well, if you must know--- Realistically, getting cancer at an advanced age is a pretty good way to go. Not as good as a sudden MI in the middle of the night from unexpected and previously unnoticed vascular disease. And not as good as being shot by a jealous husband at the age of 97. But pretty good. The thing that makes cancer at advanced age stand out as epidemiologically desirably, is that cancer compresses morbility time before death pretty well. Most people need institutional or total nursing care less than a couple of months. They actually die of malnutrition and infection as proximate causes, and these are usually not painful. Nor, half the time at least, is the cancer itself. People WANT to die of heart disease, but the problem with that is, half the time heart disease doesn't kill people right away, but makes them go through a long series of heart attacks and surgeries and periods of recovery and sometimes outright dependency with chronic heart failure. There's no way to insure that coronary disease will kill quickly and without long illness, and usually it doesn't. On the whole cancer's a lot faster. once you get sick. The other main causes of death related to aging are morbidity and institutional care disasters. Stroke and all kinds of dementia are, for obvious reasons, nightmares for both patients and health care planners. Osteoporosis and hip fracture also, for the same reasons. As for infection due to immune decline with aging, it seems to be a proximate cause of death but is usally secondary to something else underlying. Most people otherwise healthy and mobile are pretty resistant to dying of infection. Most infections nail people who've become immobilized with malnutrician/cancer, hip fracture, dementia/stroke, and so on. They generally consist of pneumonias and the urosepsis which takes off anybody immobilized, who has a chronic catheter for incontinence. Cheefully, SBH From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com> Newsgroups: sci.med,sci.med.diseases.cancer Subject: Re: Good News about America's Top Killers Date: 21 Jan 2005 18:37:36 -0800 Message-ID: <1106361456.600814.197610@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> >>We're already halfway there. We haven't found out how to always make people live longer, but we certainly know how to always make it seem longer.......... << That's an old joke but a goodie. If you give up red meat and alcohol you may or may not live longer, but it will certainly SEEM like longer... From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com> Newsgroups: sci.med,sci.med.diseases.cancer Subject: Re: Good News about America's Top Killers Date: 22 Jan 2005 14:54:16 -0800 Message-ID: <1106434456.905803.254240@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> There will always be exceptions, and please note what I said about stroke and dementia. Cancers of the brain in many ways model those better than they do other cancers, so of course it's not the same clinical picture. Brain and bone lessions are mostly what give cancer a bad name. SBH From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl@KeithLynch.net> Newsgroups: sci.med,sci.med.diseases.cancer Subject: Re: Good News about America's Top Killers Date: 24 Jan 2005 20:55:20 -0500 Message-ID: <ct48u8$32g$1@panix1.panix.com> Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > ... and the urosepsis which takes off anybody immobilized, who has a > chronic catheter for incontinence. Then why use catheters instead of diapers? -- Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/ Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me. From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com> Newsgroups: sci.med,sci.med.diseases.cancer Subject: Re: Good News about America's Top Killers Date: 24 Jan 2005 19:27:34 -0800 Message-ID: <1106623654.795793.143870@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> Convenience of staff, in part. Also, skin breakdown and bedsores are worse with chronically wet skin, so you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. |