An example to follow

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal has a very interesting article in the on the choices physicians make when it comes to their own end-of-life decisions. In some ways the comments on the article are even more interesting.

What Ken Murray writes simply confirms my own thinking on the topic. But the comments present a wide variety of views, and bring up some of the practical difficulties in making appropriate end-of-life decisions for ourselves or our loved ones.

One thing that surprised me in the comments was the level of cynicism regarding the motives of the medical establishment. Some people accuse doctors of recommending and performing procedures that cost a lot but do little to improve or extend life, simply to make more money. The more reasonable (IMO) comments point out that doctors feel obliged to provide what amounts to futile care, simply to minimize the possibility of ruinously expensive lawsuits.

Reading science for the fun of it

I like reading about science. For months now I’ve been checking in at futurity.org every few days to see if they have any new and interesting articles. Some days there are new ones, but few really catch my interest. The biggest thing I’ve learned from reading articles there is how narrow the scope is of much scientific research.

In order to show that A causes B, you have to limit the effects of C, D, E, F, and G, or at least control for them in analyzing your data. That means that you are often studying a very small part of a very big picture. Put together all the scientific research being done around the world, and it starts adding up, which is why we see such incredible advances in certain fields. But the results of any individual research project can seem pretty underwhelming.

Today I came across Science 2.0, which covers a wide variety of scientific fields, and has contributors who are good at writing, not just at science. They may not have news quite as up-to-date as futurity.org, but the articles are a whole lot more interesting. (Obviously that’s just my opinion, but then this is my blog – who else’s opinion would you expect it to be?)

I happened to encounter Science 2.0 by way of The Daytime Astronomer, written by Alex “Sandy” Antunes. The particular article which I stumbled on (thanks to Thirty Three Things, a regular feature at the First Thoughts blog) was Which Science Kills More People? OK, so it’s not exactly a serious study of mortality rates, but I was glad to see that, despite the title, it was not an anti-science screed blaming chemicals for everything that’s wrong with modern life. (You do realize, don’t you, that you can die from an excess of dihydrogen monoxide?)

Most of the articles I read, in my brief excursion at Science 2.0 this evening, are more serious in nature, but they are also well-written and therefore enjoyable to read. I look forward to reading more of them, either when I have time to spare, or when I need a good topic for my own blog post.

Books: The Last Surgeon

For a medical thriller, The Last Surgeon is light on scenes involving the practice of medicine. One of the main characters is a surgeon suffering from PTSD (after being one of only two survivors of a suicide attack that killed the rest of his unit in Afghanistan), and it is interesting to read about how he and the other veterans with the condition seek to cope with it. It is only late in the novel, however, that the fact that one man’s medical history is key to all the various subplots becomes apparent.

What there is a lot of is suspense, hints at a conspiracy connected to some very high-placed government officials, and a variety of ways people can be killed in such a way that it doesn’t look like murder. I found myself hoping that unbalanced individuals who might be tempted to murder would not read this book, or else that the creative murder ideas used in the book were already well-known or else too difficult to pull off as successfully as Franz Koller does it.

I would have liked to see more exploration of the moral ramifications of whether the ends justify the means. When the bad guys do it (cooperating with a known terrorist to save American lives – at least according to the mastermind behind the conspiracy), it’s clearly wrong. But when the good guys do it (using a teenage computer hacker to violate the privacy of patient medical records), it’s necessary to stop the bad guys, and the ethical implications are pretty much glossed over.

On the whole I enjoyed the book, as the mystery and suspense overrode any dissatisfaction with whatever flaws the book has. But the most memorable – and surprising – aspect of the book for me was that I found myself glad when the psychopathic serial killer was himself killed in a manner he would gladly have inflicted on others.

Most of the time, while I want the good guys to win, I am bothered by descriptions of painful death, regardless of how much the bad guy may deserve it. I remember once sitting in a movie theater when the audience erupted in applause as the villain burned to death, and feeling very uncomfortable both with the grisly sight and my obviously different reaction from those around me.

I’m not sure if this time the difference was that the killer had shown he had not a shred of real humanity (he compared himself to an animal, that kills because that’s simply what it does), or because his string of crimes was just so horrible. Another book I read recently brought up the quote “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic” (attributed to Joseph Stalin but primary source is unclear). Each of several deaths in this novel is the death of one man (or woman), and they never add up to (or down to) mere statistics. Whatever the reason, I was surprised to find myself saying, as the killer’s fate became clear, “Good – he had it coming.”

Books: Death du Jour

After listening to Monday Mourning some months ago, I put in an interlibrary request for the first seasons of Bones, which is also about a forensic anthropologist named Temperance Brennan (though at an earlier point in her life than in the novels). I had nearly forgotten about the request when I finally received the notice that the DVD set was on hold for me to pick up.

It’s tough to watch a whole season’s worth of TV episodes in one week (renewal for another week wasn’t allowed), and I only watched the first few. My husband and older son, however, managed to watch them all. After returning them to the library, at my husband’s request I checked out Kathy Reichs’ first book, Déjà Dead, for him to read. He finished it quickly and was eager to read the next one.

So I checked out Death du Jour, and within two days he had finished it (admittedly, he did stay up later than he had intended). Since I enjoy watching Bones (when he got some unexpected money he bought me seasons 1 and 2 so we can watch them at our leisure), he suggested I read it also. I did, and I also ended up staying up too late reading it. (But at least I took three days instead of two to finish it.)

Farewell Fidget

Yesterday marked Fidget’s eighth day in our home. I began to feel more hopeful that he would happily swim around in his aquarium for months to come.

This morning Al told me Fidget had died. He worried that he hadn’t fed Fidget enough. (I told him that was not likely to be the case – fish are more likely to die of overfeeding.) He was concerned that he hadn’t loved Fidget enough because he didn’t miss him terribly. I explained that you don’t miss a fish the way you miss a dog.

I left it up to Al to decide what to do with his dead fish. He asked that we make a small garden, bury Fidget and plant flowers over him, because fish make good fertilizer. I had been planning on planting some flowers anyway, but hadn’t had time or energy to spare to dig up the dirt.

I prepared the ground, Al dropped Fidget in, I put in the impatiens I had bought, and Al made a moving speech about what a good fish Fidget had been. I got a little choked up when he talked about Fidget swimming around happily in heaven.

Farewell, Fidget.

Books: Hideaway

I don’t consider Hideaway one of Dean Koontz’s better books. I can see from the customer reviews at amazon.com that a lot of readers do. But I also see that I’m far from alone in thinking that it starts out very well, then somewhere in the middle becomes just one more good-guy-defeats-psychotic-bad-guy-in-the-nick-of-time novel. The plot stopped feeling suspenseful, and the characters just weren’t well enough developed. (The gore factor is also high, which detracts from my enjoyment of the story.)

The questions it raises about resuscitation science, however, are quite intriguing, and I wish this aspect of the story had been developed more, rather than seeing just how extreme a portrayal of a truly evil villain could be depicted. (If you want to imagine getting inside the head of someone who truly delights in evil and death, this could be the book for you.) There is some discussion of the ethical questions involved in this branch of medicine, but that occupies only a few pages fairly early in the book.

Resuscitation science, in case you’re not familiar with the term, has to do with medical treatment of patients who are, by traditional measures, already dead. It’s common enough these days for a patient to be revived after the heart stops, but that is typically immediately after it stops, such as when it happens on the operating table. The longer the interval between the heart stopping and then starting again, the less likely that resuscitation will be successful, and the greater the chances of permanent brain damage even if it is.

In Hideaway, a man is resuscitated after having been dead over an hour, and it is a complete success, largely due to his having drowned in icy water. A similar case in real life is described in this article about resuscitation science. (Another case also described is that of a woman whose heart was deliberately stopped in order to safety treat a brain aneurysm.)

A matter of death or life

When we think about the economic downturn, most of us probably think in terms of job security, whether we can pay the bills, the effect on our savings for retirement, and the rapidly rising national debt. But until yesterday I had given little thought to its effect on the criminal justice system.

USA Today reports that several states have been considering abolishing the death penalty, primarily as a means to save money. Some proponents of the death penalty are quick to point out (see readers’ comments on this article) how much less it would cost to execute criminals right away than to keep them in prison for years or even decades. But it is the appeals process that costs so much money, and the recent examples of people exonerated based on DNA evidence show that the initial verdict is certainly not always right.

I remember when I first heard of the death penalty. I was in the living room, near the console radio, and I saw a headline about it. I don’t know if it was in 1972 when the Supreme Court invalidated death penalty statutes in 40 states, or in the following years as some states rewrote their laws, approved by the Supreme Court in 1976. I do remember that I was horrified at the thought.

Movies: Casper

I hadn’t watch this movie in several years – probably not since our older son was about the age our younger son is now. So it had been long enough I thought it would be fun to see again (back then we had watched it – like so many of the children’s videos – so many times I got tired of them), and have our younger son get to see it with me. Since we couldn’t find our copy, I checked on out from the library.

Of course, neither of the boys has ever seen the Casper the Friendly Ghost comic books I enjoyed as a girl. Or the ones featuring his friend, Wendy the Good Little Witch. I can’t remember anything much about them myself, just that I liked them. And when the Casper movie came out in 1995, I remembered those comic books with nostalgia and thought the movie would be at least somewhat like them.

It isn’t. Other than Casper being a ghost who wants to make friends but scares children he’s trying to make friends with. But it’s a fun movie, with a few serious moments reflecting on the importance of relationships and love.

Goodbye, Duke

Duke, 199? – 2008

He was the calm, quiet dog at my friend’s house who seemed to me much older than what they guessed to be his age of four years. (They hadn’t had him as a puppy; as best as they and the vet could tell, he had probably been abused by at least one previous owner.) He didn’t have the exuberant puppy energy that our black lab had had, nor the tendency to try to nibble at me (not to mention chewing on furniture and shoes) that the collie/Sheltie mix had.

When she found out we were ready to get another dog, my friend offered Duke to us. Apparently he had never been comfortable with her (speculation was that her voice might have been too similar to his first, abusive owner), and they were ready to get a hunting dog. I wondered how easily he would adjust to a new home, but it only took a few hours before he stopped looking out the window for her to come back and took to following me everywhere.

He was hardly the couch potato I had thought he was. When I took him for walks, he was eager to run. We compromised at a jog that I could handle (for a few blocks, at least) and that kept him from stopping at every mailbox. Occasionally when someone didn’t close a door quickly enough he managed to get loose and run on his own, but fortunately he stopped at so many mailboxes and trees that we caught up with him within a half mile or so and could lead him home.

Meditation: Psalm 90:9-10

All our days pass away under your wrath;
we finish our years with a moan.
The length of our days is seventy years-
or eighty, if we have the strength;
yet their span is but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

I finally tackled thinking about and memorizing these verses last night, and was reminded why I had put them off before. They simply do not match my own experience of life or that of most people I know. So it is difficult to think in terms of how to understand God speaking to me through them.

I can understand why Moses might write such words. For forty years he had to lead the Israelites through the wilderness, although a direct route to the Promised Land would have been short enough, because God had determined that those who had refused to trust Him would die without reaching the land He had promised to their children. Over and over God sent terrible judgments on disobedient people, and Moses watched the people live and die under God’s wrath.