[kcplate]

My dad did a short stint in memory care before he passed (86 years old). He had Alzheimer’s caused dementia. I was surprised by how many younger (60s+) people than him that there were in his facility.

Without having much experience with early onset Alzheimer’s, I had always assumed that healthcare keeping people alive longer allowing people to live long enough to develop it was the reason it seemed to be more and more prevalent.

All I guess I really know for sure is that it’s a horrible fucking disease.

[chiefalchemist]

I'm sorry for you loss.

And you raise an important point... We're living longer. Medicine is getting better at that*. But we're not living better. In fact, afaik, a significant percentage of healthcare spending in is the last couple years of life.

* The same can be said of war. Fewer soldiers are dying but the otherside of that coin more survivors are ruined forever. Less death shouldn't make war any more acceptable.

[kcplate]

> We're living longer. Medicine is getting better at that. But we're not living better.

I think to a degree we live better to a point*, but at a certain point of no return that longevity benefit of modern healthcare can create a poor quality of life where the peace of death would be preferable.

[chiefalchemist]

Agreed. The gist of my point is, we're fooled by the metric (i.e., longevity) because it's easy to measures, strokes the public's ego, etc. We keep obcessing over how long (quantity) to the point of neglecting the quality of life. In a way we're increasing our suffering, not mitigating it.