The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, and that is, of course, its most basic task. Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don’t want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can’t, someone who understands that the damage is greatest if all you do is battle to the bitter end.
Most often, these days, medicine seems to supply neither Custers nor Lees. We are increasingly the generals who march the soldiers onward, saying all the while, “You let me know when you want to stop.” All-out treatment, we tell the incurably ill, is a train you can get off at any time—just say when. But for most patients and their families we are asking too much. They remain riven by doubt and fear and desperation; some are deluded by a fantasy of what medical science can achieve. Our responsibility, in medicine, is to deal with human beings as they are. People only die once. They have no experience to draw on. They need doctors and nurses who are willing to have the hard discussions and say what they have seen, who will help people prepare for what is to come—and escape a warehoused oblivion that few really want.
This is a great quote, but even moreso than Custers and Lees I feel like we need someone not so much on the front lines, but someone to win the whole war—maybe Lincoln, but my knowledge of the American Civil War is poor. Preventing death from most relevant causes (aging, infectious disease, etc.) seems within reach before the end of the century, as a conservative guess. Hastening winning that war means that society will no longer need so many generals, Lees, Custers or otherwise.
Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.
This is a great quote, but even moreso than Custers and Lees I feel like we need someone not so much on the front lines, but someone to win the whole war—maybe Lincoln, but my knowledge of the American Civil War is poor. Preventing death from most relevant causes (aging, infectious disease, etc.) seems within reach before the end of the century, as a conservative guess. Hastening winning that war means that society will no longer need so many generals, Lees, Custers or otherwise.
I don’t think we’ll prevent death from aging within the century. Normally I’d offer to bet you, but obviously that wouldn’t work out in this case...