Foreign Perspectives

We’ve had a small run of deaths in the family lately which has set me thinking just how long you should consider prolonging a life.

In the past, prolonging a life generally meant a reasonably short lengthening so the issue of quality of life didn’t really enter into matters. Prolonging a life a few months or perhaps a few years seemed like a “good thing”. After all, there were painkillers to relieve any major pain so you weren’t torturing the person in any sense.

However, these days it’s quite a different matter. If you’ve a disease like malignant Mesothelioma you could potentially be living for years yet get to the point quite quickly where you were effectively a vegetable to those around you. That’s how my uncle spent his last decade of “life”. Was it worthwhile prolonging his “life” that extra decade? Well, consider the impact of having done just that….

For a start, he had a number of minor strokes over that decade so he was in to hospital just about every one of those years. Minor strokes don’t seem so bad but each one destroys part of your brain so as time went on there was less of him there. When we left for France some six years or so ago he could move his hand and in rare moments would stumble across the name of someone close to him that was visiting him in the nursing home. Last year, he could neither move nor speak.

Possibly more noticeable was that ten years back he was able to walk and see various friends and family now and again. Granted, his mind wasn’t all there at that time but aside from wandering out at all hours and thinking that every day was Sunday, he managed to get by quite well. In his final years he only saw his sisters briefly each week and never saw any other friends or family. In the eulogy at his funeral service the massive difference between his early life travelling the world and the final decade couldn’t have been more striking.

On the other hand, consider my cousin Harold. He’s been diabetic since he was 13 which sounds really awful and to some extent that’s certainly true. However, that didn’t stop him having quite a full life right up until a few weeks ago. Whilst he didn’t get to travel the world as Andy had, he certainly had a lot of good times with his family right throughout his life. Oh, sure, the diabetes was a major hassle causing him to lose his toe and his kidneys to close down but keeping him alive throughout that time did give him quite a good quality of life and indeed a good life (“quality of life” rarely means that, of course).

Prolonging a life that’s reasonably good does seem worthwhile. The snag is that there’s a tendency to prolong it way, way beyond that time these days, simply because we can.

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I was watching a film from the 1950s the other day and one of the most striking things about it was just how much smoking the various characters did.

You just don’t see that these days but was that the result of anti-smoking legislation? Well, in the early days it certainly was. Prior to the various laws kicking in, the tobacco companies made a point of what we’d now call product placement where-ever they could. The whole idea was very similar to Coke’s present day approach: get your product associated with everything good in life and people would use it more. Thus Coke were out with their “the taste of freedom” in the days when the Berlin wall was collapsing.

More recently the anti-smoking laws around Europe have been tightened up considerably. Sometimes it seems even to me that the “no smoking in public places” laws have gone that little bit too far to the extreme. However, it surely must be a good thing that you no longer see the guys lighting up their Rocky Patel when their child is born. Could it ever have been a good thing to associate a poisonous carcinogen with a baby? Thankfully too, the restaurants are a joy to be in these days and we take our family to them when the previous smoke filled atmosphere put us right off.

So, yes, they do generally do their job. The approach can initially be seen as heavy-handed but when you look back on how far we’ve come it certainly seems the case that they have worked and saved quite a number of lives in the process.

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Online tutorials are all the rage with the Open University these days.

Why isn’t all about money though obviously money does play a big part in it. For instance, my 30 point astronomy course comes with two in-person tutorials and two more online ones for our tutor group vs a more typical 4 in-person ones for the older human biology course. For the astronomy course, it looks very much like it’s all down to cost.

However, on the shorter courses online tutorials are in place of no tutorials at all. Many years ago when I did the 10 point introductory astronomy course, there weren’t any tutorials at all (though you could call your tutor in theory). These days the equivalent 10 point science courses all come with online tutorials.

In the middle ground are the 15 point courses which are basically a 30 point course load but taken over half the time. Thus they should come with two in-person tutorials but in reality they come with only online tutorials. Frankly if my experience with the cardiology course is anything to go by, there really aren’t any online tutorials. Thus far the online “tutorial” has consisted of the tutor posting a question in December and receiving a couple of replies from some students within a few days. There’s been no activity on that tutorial forum since.

The other problem is with the course-wide tutorials which are run by the astronomy course. Within a few hours of the first one starting there were far more messages than I for one could cope with. Were any relevant? Who knows? I certainly didn’t have the time to go through and read all the stuff.

So, “probably not” is the conclusion I’m coming to.

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