May 24, 2012
In that New York comment thread are some interesting points Wolff missed. Try this for cynicism:
Dementia Care is the new hot product on Wall Street. Far less risky that regular commercial real estate, because it’s not subject to the whims of the market. Less risky than regular residential, because the residents can’t really leave, and because their bills are paid using guaranteed money from the government. It is really a brilliant product.
Cynical as that is, I bet there’s something to it. Wolff covers in detail the fact that the vast and ever-swelling cost of warehousing helpless, semi-demented old people cannot but become a major political issue. We are heading for an almighty, steel-plate-grinding collision between traditional humanitarian ideals and fiscal possibility.
For most of us, the recurring question is: How do I avoid this fate? How do I prevent this from happening to me?
Michael Wolff gives his answer in a closing paragraph:
Meanwhile, since, like my mother, I can’t count on someone putting a pillow over my head, I’ll be trying to work out the timing and details of a do-it-yourself exit strategy. As should we all.
Perhaps we should, but given the human inclination to hope against hope””I can’t go on. I’ll go on…””and the possibility of a stroke or accident that deprives you even of the power of suicide, I doubt that do-it-yourself exit strategies, even if widely popularized, will move the numbers much.
Legalized euthanasia doesn’t necessarily help cases such as Mrs. Wolff’s. A report on jurisdictions where it is allowed notes that:
It appears that in “boundary cases”, such as suffering in the case of early dementia or existential suffering, there is more variance between physicians” and patients” perception of whether such suffering could be considered unbearable.
So there’s still some damn doctor making the decision.
The conditions endured by Mrs. Wolff and the millions like her are unconscionably cruel. The associated costs, as the numbers grow and the life-prolonging techniques multiply, will be unsustainable. Yet our inhibitions against killing remain strong, and our litigation-whipped medical profession is extremely unlikely to take a lead on the issue.
In Brave New World, as I recall, everyone lives into their early sixties, then swiftly declines and dies. That seems to me ideal if the necessary genomic tinkering can be done.
Until it is, sauve qui peut. I have a good selection of guns and have made up my mind that if it comes to diapers, I shall see myself out with a gun. I will not wear diapers”that’s the end point for me, the milestone I am determined not to pass.
I promise not to make too much of a mess. Heart, not head”like Flory in Burmese Days“and outdoors if I can make it: ideally a nice hillside in the Poconos, watching the sun go down, with a good cigar and some decent bourbon for company. But I will not wear diapers.
