Submitted by Michael Snyder of The American Dream blog,
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm Emanuel, says that society would be far better off if people quit trying to live past age 75. His new article entitled “Why I Hope To Die At 75” has the following very creepy subtitle: “An argument that society and families—and you – will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly”. In the article, Emanuel forcefully argues that the quality of life for most people is significantly diminished past the age of 75 and that once we get to that age we should refuse any more medical care that will extend our lifespans. This is quite chilling to read, considering the fact that this is coming from one of the key architects of Obamacare. Of course he never uses the term “death panels” in his article, but that is obviously what Emanuel would want in a perfect world. To Emanuel, it is inefficient to waste medical resources on those that do not have a high “quality of life”. So he says that “75 is a pretty good age to aim to stop”.
Emanuel believes in this philosophy so much that he says that he would like to die at age 75. Of course he has no intention of committing suicide, but if he happened to drop dead once he hits his 75th birthday he would be very happy about that. The following is an excerpt from his new article…
I am talking about how long I want to live and the kind and amount of health care I will consent to after 75. Americans seem to be obsessed with exercising, doing mental puzzles, consuming various juice and protein concoctions, sticking to strict diets, and popping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to cheat death and prolong life as long as possible. This has become so pervasive that it now defines a cultural type: what I call the American immortal.
I reject this aspiration. I think this manic desperation to endlessly extend life is misguided and potentially destructive. For many reasons, 75 is a pretty good age to aim to stop.
And so Emanuel plans to start rejecting pretty much all medical tests and treatments that will prolong his life once he reaches that age…
At 75 and beyond, I will need a good reason to even visit the doctor and take any medical test or treatment, no matter how routine and painless. And that good reason is not “It will prolong your life.” I will stop getting any regular preventive tests, screenings, or interventions. I will accept only palliative—not curative—treatments if I am suffering pain or other disability.
This means colonoscopies and other cancer-screening tests are out—and before 75. If I were diagnosed with cancer now, at 57, I would probably be treated, unless the prognosis was very poor. But 65 will be my last colonoscopy. No screening for prostate cancer at any age. (When a urologist gave me a PSA test even after I said I wasn’t interested and called me with the results, I hung up before he could tell me. He ordered the test for himself, I told him, not for me.) After 75, if I develop cancer, I will refuse treatment.
Similarly, no cardiac stress test. No pacemaker and certainly no implantable defibrillator. No heart-valve replacement or bypass surgery. If I develop emphysema or some similar disease that involves frequent exacerbations that would, normally, land me in the hospital, I will accept treatment to ameliorate the discomfort caused by the feeling of suffocation, but will refuse to be hauled off.
A couple of decades ago, an article like this would have sparked mass public outrage.
But today, this article hardly even gets any attention.
That is because this kind of philosophy has spread everywhere. It is being taught at colleges and universities across the United States and it is even represented throughout the ranks of the Obama administration.
For example, Barack Obama’s top science adviser John P. Holdren believes that implanting sterilization capsules under the skin of women could be a way to reduce the size of the population and increase the quality of life for everyone…
A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.
The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.
Yes, this guy is a total nutjob.
But he also has the ear of the man occupying the White House.
And we are not just talking about a few isolated crazies like Holdren. This agenda have been fully embraced by our politicians in Washington.
For instance, did you know that the federal government actually has an “Office of Population Affairs“?
On the website of the Office of Population Affairs, you can find information about abortion, female sterilization, male sterilization and a vast array of contraceptive choices.
U.S. taxpayers are paying for all of this, but most people don’t even know that it exists.
Of course this agenda has been moved forward by both Democrats and Republicans for decades.
And the woman that is very likely to be our next president is also a very strong proponent of this philosophy.
When Hillary Clinton accepted Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award back in 2009, she spoke glowingly of Sanger…
In a speech to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Awards Gala, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that she admires “Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision.” Secretary Clinton said she is “really in awe of” Sanger for Sanger’s early work in Brooklyn, New York, “taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions.”
But the truth is that Sanger was deeply racist and was determined to do whatever she could to help control the population growth of the poor. The following is one of her most famous statements…
“The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
Hillary Clinton is also a huge supporter of the United Nations Population Fund. If you are not familiar with the United Nations Population Fund, it is an organization that funds abortion, forced sterilization and brutal eugenics programs throughout the developing world.
Population control advocates such as Emanuel, Holdren and Clinton are fully convinced that they are doing the right thing.
They actually believe that the world will be a better place if less people are born and if the elderly do not live as long.
“They actually believe that the world will be a better place if less people are born and if the elderly do not live as long.”
To the extent that the children are born on welfare and the elderly are on welfare, this is true. The tax donkeys are getting tired, and there are too few of us left to pull the wagon.
So off with the old folks’ heads, the better to spend millions saving the lives of future ghetto artists, gang bangers, bureaucrats and banksters.
He kinda has a point. My sister in law’s father recently had a triple bypass performed and shunts inserted in his heart. He is on around $10k of medicine a month. We have paid for most of it all AND he is 83, diabetic and overweight.
What in the HELL are we hoping the best outcome of this is? A couple more years of going to the doctor? In and out of hospitals? For WHAT?
Even my own dad is costing the system/his grandchildren tens of thousands of dollars to prolong his miserable, sick, life. On TWELVE meds a day. TWELVE. For a 75 yo man that has refused to take care of his health – while, btw, doing what the doctor orders which has made him overall less healthy – and does not work, nor support, a family or anyone.
We have some hard, hard, choices to make if we wish to continue to allow Big Med and Big Gov to drive the prices up sky high.
Paying tens, if not hundreds, of thousands on 80 year old’s surgery is insanity.
Especially when you consider that are literally millions of workers/families that don’t even make $50k A YEAR.
It isn’t cruel, it is just freaking math.
And it isn’t hard. The choices may be but the math sure as hell isn’t.
Wasn’t that the gist of the 70’s movie “Logan’s Run”? Everyone who turns 30 goes into the carousel for re birth?
Ultimately they find this old codger living in the senate who’s in his 80’s. Go figure…
My new next door neighbor is 78 years old and completely renovated his entire house in 2 months flat. Made me look like a sloth doing minor repairs…. I know another fellow who turned 95 this year…. still lawn bowls!!!! Ya I think if we take these so called experts and culled them at say “when they make these stupid assertions”, we’d be much better off as a society.
TE…I understand what you are saying but many folks are over-medicated by the docs and Big Pharma. Perhaps if diet, exercise and natural remedies were used by most of the doc’s first instead of drugs then the cost of living into our 80’s and beyond wouldn’t cost the tax payers so much .
(This guy is a total nut job )Don’t know if he is a nut job but I do know he is deadly serious .I have read some of the things he has written . He views old people much like he views the unborn. He thinks it is ok for doctors to commit murder. What so shocking is he is Jewish. You would think after the genocide of Jews in Germany he would be cautious about giving government workers and doctors the authority to kill people. These people never learn anything.
Buckhed, absolutely, if people were healthy, moved their asses, only did unhealthy things in moderation instead of habit, then yes with modern sanitation and surgery we would be living long, healthy lives.
Logan’s Run was scary because it was compulsory. Once the age is hit, that’s it, you are dead and gone. Doesn’t matter if you are a contributor, or a user, sick, or well, just a checkbox on a form and gone. And nobody stops it, speaks against it. They just comply.
Much like Mr. Emanuel, and the thousands/millions just like him. They all think they are smarter, better, better equipped to think like this. And they have no problem with breaking a few eggs to make their Utopian omelet. Ah @bb, yes Jewish. You obviously don’t know many of them well. Most I have known will tell you – if they like you – that they only care about their own kind (whom would probably get passes to live on past 75), and the next world. They don’t truly believe that screwing over – or killing – Muslims or Christians will matter in their next world. They were promised if they follow the silly diet and sabbath laws, after all. No your enemy bb, Zionists like Emanuel might be on your radar whether Jewish or not.
Anyway, I plan on being the 75 year old that remodels houses. I can still work a 15 hour day now, in my late 40s, and I fully plan on being able to do it then too. Just slower. Or, let’s be honest, in another 30 years this insanity will more than likely have reached its end and I wouldn’t have any other choice. I’ll either be fit and healthy and alive, or sick and dying.
The past 100 years we have decided to play god with our health. I get the feeling if we ever revert to the mean we are going to way overshoot.
And people wonder why I shun as many modern chemicals – in any form – as I can. People like Emanuel sit at the head of all our major organizations and think insanity like this.
Or the insanity of giving a newborn infant 50, or even 1000, vaccinations for their health.
We are the distracted led by the demented. I’m sure it will end well.
We all know I’ve got issues with boomers…..but this is bullshit. Aaaaaaaaand……cue Hillary.
Like it or not the U.S. Is on a collision course.
Do you favor Karl Deningers approach of enforce existing anti trust law and free market pricing.
Or a National Health Insurance program paid by sales taxes and health care rationing.
I regret to say this. But it looks like a Nation Health Care system. People are just incapable of using reasoning to grasp what Denininger is advocating.
So get ready here it comes.
Just as the Military Industrial Complex is not about “defense,” it’s about jobs and incomes and executive compensation at the manufacturers, spending $50k or $300k on some 80-year-old’s surgery is not about his/her health, it’s about the massive food chain of employment, from surgeons and nurses to coding clerks and the vast federal bureaucracies involved.
Eliminate Medicare (and Medicaid) and unemployment would rise 500%.
The entire economy of the USA is like a crack addict after 10 years on the pipe. Addiction doesn’t begin to describe the situation, nor the path ahead.
I’m surprised he would say this. He’s now messing with the profitability of Big Med and Big Pharma. If they lose all that revenue from the elderly, they will have to jack up prices on everybody else or else invent a lot of new illnesses to treat.
I agree a lot of the elderly are over treated. I can hear AWD now. Some, though, are pretty hale and hearty and benefit from a medication or two and some monitoring, Bureaucracies are always inefficient because they must apply rules like this idiotic suggestion.
By the way, Mr. Emmanuel will find that his view has changed in another 10 years.
@ Mark,
Understanding how freedom yields better outcomes via spontaneous organization is clearly beyond the cognitive abilities of over 90% (99%?) of adults.
This is why central planning by “experts” has been on a roll for over 100 years. A “plan” is something people limited to concrete thinking can grasp, where as pure abstractions like spontaneously organized processes (e.g., the market) might as well be Ancient Greek.
Planning (like a “National Health System”) is by definition socialism. I use this term not as a pejorative but as a descriptor. Mises publish his definitive work on this in 1922, and his “Socialism” irrefutably shows why planning can only succeed in squandering scarce resources.
This will not stop people from trying a National Health Service, for the simple reason that the vast majority of people are simply incapable of understanding (and thus supporting) a market-based system.
Emanuel clearly does not have his own kids.
So we start doing this when does it stop? Since I would only live till 75 I’ll party like there is no tomorrow! Oh, wait, there will be no tomorrow for me then. By golly if it works great at 75 then it will be even better doing it at 70! Not much different when abortion was federally legalized. First it was only the first trimester. Then onto the second trimester. Now abortions can occur almost up to the time of birth! This is what happens when the government camel starts sticking their nose into the tent.
Once you concede the notion that matters of health and illness should be decided by political systems, there is nothing that is technically “off the table.”
Today our neighbors embrace the notion that EVERY aspect of human existence is fodder for political decision-making.
All Emanuel is saying is that if this is so, then one’s VERY EXISTENCE is fodder for political decision-making.
And people think I’m nuts for saying POLITICS = EVIL.
Notice how limited is Emanuel’s thinking.
Never could it occur to him that current breakthroughs could be eliminating the negatives he posits about old age.
This is why we KNOW, beyond a doubt, that if scientific research ever does discover the way to put off old age deterioration for decades or longer, ONLY politically powerful people would be allowed to have it.
The neo-Malthusians want a planet with a lot fewer people on it. They will do everything in their power to see you and yours exit…gracefully or “the hard way.”
So we’re going to put a number on it – like 75. What about the 65 yr old who has a host of problems and is costing us a lot of money / yr? All they want to do is put a $ value on a life.
I have an idea, let’s look at all the baby mama’s shitt’n out chilln. I hear it cost over $1 million in entitlements (section 8, Medicaid, social workers, SNAP, public assistance, free meals a school, you name it) Additionally these people benefit from government schools – to which they pay no taxes – cause they don’t work.
You can google the stats: It takes $168 a day! For each family in poverty. That’s $61,300 a year. That’s $1,100,000 for 18 years.
Let’s just ‘unfund’ these people, they pay not taxes, contribute little of nothing, and require all sorts of managed government programs.. Besides most of the kids turn out to be criminals or lay-abouts.
Read this on ZH this morning and was chilled. Instead of extending the lives of healthy, vital people who have a chance to live while making the end easier and more comfortable for those of any age who have hopeless end-stage illnesses, Dr Emanuel and his ilk propose to put an arbitrary cap on our lifespans, no matter how healthy and functional a person may be.
This is EXACTLY the mentality that informed the doctors who never gave my mother cancer screening during the time of her life, age 65-75, when she could easily have been treated successfully for the uterine cancer that was to kill her at age 79. A hysterectomy at age 72 would have given her 10 more GOOD years. She was otherwise the picture of health and vitality, still intelligent and eager to learn, active, and full of life.
The only thing I am thankful for is that her period of suffering was very, very brief. She lived until she died, having no idea that anything ailed her until a month before the end.
Another dear relative was stricken by a particularly vicious cancer a few months later. But, since he was only in his 60s, his life was extended, and his suffering increased immeasurably. No one should have to suffer as he did, led on by the practitioners who offered false hope and greatly extended his suffering, which was unspeakable. Letting go would have been merciful.
Facing the inevitable and declining to extend the suffering of the terminally ill is much different than deciding that people who could live, have no right to simply because they have reached a certain age.
Both Emanuel brothers are motherfuckers.
If Emanuel actually gave a rat’s ass about the elderly he’d advocate for the elimination of prescription drug laws. Let people decide for themselves ENTIRELY about their bodies. If, at 80 life is no longer a high enough quality to keep on, then let that person pop enough opioid to quietly stop breathing.
People either own their bodies and own their property or we’re all just chattel on the Government Slave Plantation.
Ownership has responsibilities, ownership has risks and rewards.
Quality of life? OK.
We should euthanize:
All Downs babies
All Quadriplegics
All those in a coma beyond x number of days
All with an IQ below xx
All stage 3 cancer patients (if money gets short, stage 2/1 or precancer or genetically disposed to cancer)
etc.
Makes as much sense as no one goes beyond xx years of age.
Is it possible he is floating the idea that Medicare quit at age 75?
EF