Extensive Life Support and Care for the Elderly

Social issues are all around us.  Two of these are the question of the naturalness of extensive life support and the neglect of elderly.  Both deal with the matter of valuing life, and how this can best be expressed. 

Figure 1.5 in Writing Arguments is a political cartoon.  The cartoon says “Physician-assisted suicide is just not natural”, but observers pick up on the irony presented in the cartoon by the vegetable of a man on life support.  This has the effect of making views question the morality of extensive life support. As the TV in the scenes shows, assisted suicide is not natural, but neither is assisted living through extreme, extensive life support. 

The type of life support condemned in the carton is that in which a person has no hope for recovery to a functional life and the person is in a vegetable state.  The only things between life and death for that person are machines, but often it is debated between the patient’s family and the medical team at hand whether or not to “pull the plug”.   As the cartoon points out, in our society, it is deemed wrong for doctors to assist someone in suicide, yet encouraging pulling the plug ends in the same thing.  The cartoon seems to ask, “How can one be accepted when the other is not?”

The motive behind both actions are trying to do what is “best” for the person, be they in a vegetable state or being tutored by lack of will to live.  The issue that becomes the point of argument however is different persons’ ideas of what is “best” for another person’s life. 

A second social issue is brought up in the article “What Will Future Generations Condemn Us For?” in The Carolina Reader covers the issue of isolation of the elderly.  The article gives an example of elderly isolation, stating that “…14,000 elderly parents and grandparents were left to perish…” when a heat wave hit France.  This example allows the audience to grasp the criticalness of the issue that is often swept under the carpet. 

Elderly in today’s society are often stuffed into nursing homes when their families are unable or unwilling to care for them any longer.  Once the man or woman is in the home, visiting the patient can easily slip out of relatives’ routine.  The elderly in homes begin to suffer from isolation in the facilities.  This isolation is added to by the fact that many of these nursing homes are understaffed. Not only are the elderlies’ families not making time for them, the paid caretakers of the home are unable to provide much companionship either. 

While the issue of extensive life support often comes down to a matter of opinion of what is “best” for the person that may never be resolved, the issue of care for the elderly can be fixed.  A fresh idea and change of attitude toward elderly is needed.