Written by I remember I had an aunt once who was very sick with cancer. She had already been through one round of chemotherapy, during which the cancer had continued to spread, and so the doctors had recommended a more aggressive treatment which would have had harsher side effects. They assured my aunt that were she not to take this treatment, she would be dead in rather short order, but could provide her with no assurances that she would live any longer even with the treatment.
Now, for sure this is a difficult decision for anybody to make. Spending one’s last days sick and miserable is none too appealing. If one were on the verge of dying, it might well make sense to avoid treatments with harsh side effects, so as to spend that time enjoying the world with friends and family.
My aunt knew me to be a pretty well read guy with a knack for research, and so she had asked me to accompany her to her doctor visits and provide her with my opinions. Upon getting this information from the doctor, and doing a bit of Googling, I told her I agreed with the doctor. If she wanted to live, this treatment was the only way to prolong her life, but that of course, there was no certainty it would do so. Very much wanting my aunt to live, I suggested she take her chances with the side effects.
Met with this information, she decided that she too very much wanted to live, but did not want to deal with the side effects. She would need, as she put it “a miracle from God”. This was quite a difficult predicament for me. Religious discussions with my Catholic family never went well, but they usually weren’t matters of life and death. This time, my aunt was planning to take her religious delusion to its ultimate lethal conclusion.
She refused the treatment, and that year we celebrated her final Christmas. Not long after, she died an excruciatingly painful death.
I felt similarly when I saw Greeks elect Syriza, the “Coalition of the Radical Left” political party made up of open Marxists and Trotskyites. Years of living off borrowed money, followed by bailouts and tough austerity measures, followed by riots, followed by communism. It made my aunt’s cancer ordeal look downright peaceful, and reasonable, by comparison.