There are many over medicated and many mentally sick individuals with easy access to guns in the USA.

SSRIs in this story somwhere………

Moving right along! Nothing unusual here folks, it is called KARMA.

You kill kids in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya…. It comes home to you..
You destroy Capital cities with Shock and Awe…and you lose yours to Katrina, Sandy, relentless Tornados, and other ‘natural’ disasters.

IT IS A SPIRITUAL LAW, YOU ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU DESERVE. That is why we should do to others what we would like done TO US…..cause THAT is exactly what we will get…

Unfortunately, there are lots of such outstanding debts yet to be repaid…

As usual, since this is not a topic on religion or politics, everyone is not all over this topic. And as usual, the posters are off topic.
Did Barrow and the DLP waste their effort on “free education” in 62?

bush tea you are one insensitive SOB. ! taking an incident of this magnitude and talking bull shi..t to justify the result! try telling that to the parents who might have lost mutiple children.

Dear GP:

We have to work on prevention.

Sensible eating, drinking water, walking ’bout nuff.

I once suggested to an MP that every school should have good side walks for at least one mile in each direction, so that children can walk to school. I was punished with laughter.

Side walks ain’t sexy.

The people, I was told don’t walk side walks from their MP’s

The people I suppose want more and bigger highways, and flyovers, and a “choice” parking spot right outside their office doors. The people want to be big shots just like their bosses and their MP’s. And big shots don’t walk na way. Big shots don’t walk, and big shots don’t sweat.

The people want to be like their bosses, their MP’s and other big shots. They want to step from air conditioned house, to air conditioned car to air conditioned office.

Nobody wants to sweat. Sweating is low class and undignified.

Caterers feed our MP’s. But has any single MP ever suggested a gym for the House of Assembly? Or decent side walks from Bay Street to Broad Street?

If our leaders don’t know what is good for themselves, how can they know what is good for us?

I would suggest that we have the blind leading the blind.

Just last year I saw a young 300 pound mother board a bus with her fat elementary aged daughter only to disembark by the school one bus stop away. And no they were not late. It was well before 8:00 am.

When I was a child the only people who had “manager bellies” were a few rich, white men on the plantations, all of whom died before three score and ten.

Nowadays about half of us Bajans have “manager bellies”.

@ Bush Tea | December 15, 2012 at 12:03 AM |

More than “Karma” is being played out here.
America is a country forged out of violence, mayhem and slavery.
Who do you think massacred millions of the indigenous populations, slaughtered the bison for fun to starve the remaining strugglers and took over their lands.
The seeds of self-destruction are germinating within that erstwhile land of the free and the brave but only as long as you were of European ancestry.

“If you live by the gun you will die by the gun”.

A similar fate awaits white Australia but no so much by the gun but by radiation from ultraviolet rays.

David
Re “Our main achievements today consist of devising ways to marginally extend the lives of the very sick.”

The statement below is a load of bovine excrement. Today many diseases are diagnosed earlier than before, and the development in technology has allowed treatment modalities that have done much more than” marginally extend the lives of the very sick.”

Re “ In the war against disease, we have unwittingly created a kind of medicine that is barely affordable now and forbiddingly unaffordable in the long run.”
Whereas the cost of “medicine” has increased, one of the things that makes things unaffordable is the wastage by consumers, and the greed exhibited by drug companies, some doctors and insurance agencies. In many places of the world, a lot is being done with very little.
Re “ Ours is now a medicine that may doom most of us to an old age that will end badly: ” with our declining bodies falling apart as they always have” “
I thought that increased numbers of elderly folk in a country was an index of increased health. Also is it not clear that many elderly folk in all age groups are healthier than ever before, especially in developing countries.

@ GP
Man what diagnosed earlier what?
Is that earlier enough to maximize the costs extracted from the victims? TRUE MEDICINE SHOULD BE PREVENTATIVE, …but then doctors would be poor like Caswell….

The general increase in life expectancy is much more a feat of ENGINEERING than of medicine. The improvements in hygiene, potable water systems, sewerage treatment systems, food storage, and the research, development and production of medicines and medical equipment has been based on Technology strides not medical.

Medicine has been mostly reactive, symptom focused, and exploitative in terms of extracting life savings from vulnerable members of society… 🙂

LOL…that should raise your heart rate a bit GP 🙂

David
I accept that NCDs are on the rise in Barbados and that diabetes Barbados has earned the title ‘amputation capital of the world, but surely there is more to medicine than NCD’S and Diabetes.
You decide to what end that we ” marginally extend the lives of the very sick.”

Bush tea
I will ignore your nonsense. I am not Zoe, who will succumb to your harrange. i am not going to get hypertension in response to your bovine excrement. When I come on BU, I usually come to be serious except for when I am obviously joking

Strange how we apply “karma”, when the fickle hand of fate reaches out and touches some countries it is called “karma”. Does ‘‘karma”’ apply only to premeditated acts? Do “Acts of God” come under Karma’s umbrella or are some Nations plain unlucky? Some religious folk will say that some countries are being punished by an Omnipotent being when catastrophe strikes. “Karma” better keep away from Haiti; Rwanda et al those people didn’t do anything to merit your attention.

@GP

Hopefully Charles will respond to the disagreement you have re: “marginally extend” – perhaps his argument is frames with a philosophical bend.

Bushtea
You seem to think that you know everything about everything.
Unlike Zoe (whose theology is very sound) I dont think that I have to prove that you are wrong, or react to your challenges. I just will not make the time to respond to your nonsense. I have spent most of my life in Medicine either learning, practicing and teaching and continual learning, and I know of what I speak. But I dont have to prove to you what I KNOW or what is KNOWN.

@ GP et al

While I thought my argument was presented cogently in its original form, let me try again.
It seems we have reached a point where simple longevity trumps quality of life issues. No one will argue that regardless of age those enjoying a good quality of life should not have available to them all the medical/technological resources society can provide. It is when, at any age, disease or physical trauma rob us of those qualities which make life worth living that merely prolonging the misery and suffering not only of the individual but of those close to them as well, needs a dispassionate review.

In 1968, at the age of 18, I began what became a year-long stay in an army hospital, recovering from the wounds of war. Directly across from me was a young man of about the same age who I only ever knew as Foreman.

Foreman had lost both legs and one arm. His remaining arm had but three fingers remaining. His genitalia had been burned away and he had also been blinded. Originally his parents and wife visited regularly, though after about two months only his parents came. On the day I was finally discharged Foreman was doing what he had done the entire time: fighting every effort made to treat him, as his chance to die with dignity on the field of battle had been thwarted by the surgeons and technology which made him a “survivor”. Every treatment forced upon him was intended to ensure longevity, while at best only marginally improving his life.

In the United States Alzheimer patients who are completely unaware of their surroundings and who are incapable of caring for themselves are routinely provided medical care, inclusive of such procedures as cardiac surgery, intended, again, to ensure longevity while only marginally improving their lives.

So yes, GP, medical science can more than marginally improve longevity while at times only marginally improving the reasons for living.