Connect
← Return to The arbitrary economics of life and death
Discussion
The arbitrary economics of life and death
Prostate Cancer | Last Active: Apr 16 3:21pm | Replies (30)Comment receiving replies
The difference is that life can be snuffed out by a semi-automatic that we can purchase for loose change; while we each demand a Ferrari (or Bugatti or Aston Martin) when we’re salvaging a few extra months from metastatic cancer. It always comes back to the consumer.
Though prostate cancer has the highest rates of diagnosis, it has one of the lowest cancer mortality rates. And it’s when dealing with mortality when things get costly.
What do we make of this strange calculus? It’s that the value of our life is what we make of it. (With my brother’s death in October 2024 due to pancreatic cancer, he made the choice that he preferred death over being “kept barely alive by a rotating cast of specialists, medications,….” As his representative, though I disagreed with his choice, it was his choice to make, mine to carry out, and the decision was made to stop treatment. The end came rather quickly after that……and no need for refilling $14,000 Aston Martin medications.)
Fortunately, only a few % of prostate cancer patients die of prostate cancer. That has remained a fairly stable % over the decades. That then begs the question - should heroic (and “Aston Martin” expensive) efforts be spent if it won’t be curative?
Yes, the prostate cancer patient is a “patient” to him and his family. But to his doctor he’s one of dozens; to his hospital he’s one of thousands; to the medical community he’s one of millions. That sounds like a statistic.
All this may not be moral; it may not even be logical. But it exhibits the true essence of humanity.
Replies to "The difference is that life can be snuffed out by a semi-automatic that we can purchase..."
Connect
"Fortunately, only a few % of prostate cancer patients die of prostate cancer."
Yes, very true, but it's important to note that there are at least two different things called "prostate cancer":
1. The slow-developing, "you'll probably die of old age before it gets you" type that typically hits in your late 60s, 70s, or 80s. This is what most people think of.
2. The fast-developing type that typically hits in your 40s, 50s, and early 60s, the one that killed people like Johnny Ramone and Frank Zappa long before their time.
The second type used to have a very high mortality rate (and very quickly). It's just in the past few years that we've come up with effective treatments to keep it under control and extend life. It's still often not discovered until it's already at stage 4.
So it's the over-generalisations about prostate cancer, as much as anything else, that kills people: for example, many doctors and agencies recommending stopped PSA screening because of the first type, and the death rate shot up for the second.
Fortunately, these days they're getting better and better at telling the two types apart, so that they don't overtreat the first type (active surveillance is often fine, at least for many years), or undertreat the second (which can metastasise, literally, in months).