Death by Cancer.

             Dr. Richard Smith was an editor of the prestigious British  Medical Journal until 2004.  Writing in a blog for the BMJ and philosophizing on the  the best way to die, he comes to some bizarre conclusions.  There are four ways to die, he postulates, sudden death as from a heart attack, the long, slow death of dementia, the ups and downs death of organ failure  and death from cancer, where you may hang on for a long time but go down usually in weeks; he mentions, but does not elaborate  on  suicide, assisted or otherwise, as a fifth.  He describes 'watching in horror' as a senior student while his colleagues tried in  vain to save hopeless patients with multi-system failure.  He does not seem to recognize that today many of the patients he considered hopeless are curable or at least very beneficially treatable with modern management .  After reflecting on dementia and mentioning that most people who he has polled in various presentations chose the 'sudden death' option he opines as follows:
               "So death from cancer is the best, the closest to the death that Buñuel wanted and had. You can say goodbye, reflect on your life, leave last messages, perhaps visit special places for a last time, listen to favourite pieces of music, read loved poems, and prepare, according to your beliefs, to meet your maker or enjoy eternal oblivion."   He does recommend that the situation can be somewhat ameliorated with love, morphine and whiskey.
                The presumption of  the man amazes me.   He does not seem to understand the nature of the human being.  :"Dum spiro spero."  No wonder he ended up editorializing for the BMJ instead of practicing medicine.  It was a good choice for one of his presumptuousness and egocentricity.
He certainly wouldn't have made it as a family doc!