A Modest Proposal....

Whew, that was a quite a different read I must say.  After reading and re-reading that essay by Jonathan Swift, I am still not sure if he was writing a story or if he was serious.  Maybe a little bit of seriousness given the dire situation his people seemed to be having.

The only thing that comes to mind is something that I have pondered for years.  We have oodles and oodles of elderly in this country that live longer and longer each year as medical advancements allow for prolonged life.  We have no sort of preventative human maintenance so to say, but once you are broken, we can fix it and keep you alive for seemingly forever.  I have for many years thought that maybe a little population control could or possibly should be done.  It has enraged a few people I have mentioned this to over the years.  I just lost my grandmother recently and she lived to a ripe old age of ninety two.  She had emphysema, major anxiety that set the emphysema off daily and a few other afflictions.  She wasn't very happy with her quality of life.  My wife's grandfather lived to be ninety eight and said everyday he wished he would just die.  There are so many people that are still alive and their quality of life isn't necessarily good or what they would deem as the way they want to live.  I sometimes think that there should be some sort of option or something that I do not have a term for or a definition of to prevent the elderly from living into their eighties and nineties and sometimes longer and living miserably with the quality of their living conditions deteriorating daily.  But we continue to develop different drugs and methods to keep prolonging their lives.  Isn't there something more important to do for these elderly than keeping them alive simply because we can?  Don't get me wrong, some may live just fine and still get around and the like.  And sometimes families selfishly make decisions for their elderly family members regardless of their wishes to make those choices.  There is also the issue of monies from medicare and those programs that would be saved and passed on to more meaningful health areas.  This may shock some and make some think pretty low of me, but I do not care.  I am just being honest with my thoughts.  I personally think if we were to poll a majority of the very elderly, many of them would not be happy or content with their living conditions.  It can't be the greatest life to be in a nursing facility with visitors sometimes coming to see you only to leave and leave you alone with your bingo and bad food, bad or improper care, and sometimes horrible depression developing along with feelings of being alone.  And when they develop Alzheimer's or dementia, whats the point?  I know right now I will not allow that to happen to me.  It sounds like incarceration to me.  And it is quite expensive and a drain on insurance monies that could be saved and used on other medical areas.  Maybe there can be something along with will preparation and advanced directives I think they are called that would illustrate what their choices would be pertaining to just letting them go.  I'm not sure if Dr. Kevorkian type deaths are even legal or allowed but why not.  I am not saying whack the elderly when they hit a certain age necessarily but when they get to the point of being miserable, give them the option to end it and pass on into whatever is there once we leave this world.  I don't know how it would or could work but I really think something should be done.  Like I stated above, families sometimes selfishly make decisions to keep the elderly alive even when they want to let go.  There are a lot of benefits that would be reaped from this and I think alot of grateful elderly if we could come up with something.  Hopefully I wont be lynched for my thoughts.