GentleJerk
Carrot juice pimp.
- Dec 14, 2021
- 1,372
I have some thoughts about so called 'natural death'.
this comes up a lot especially in suicide discussion, because a good chunk of people say death by suicide is 'unnatural'. On closer inspection, many 'natural causes' of death aren't natural at all.
My grandfather is accepted to have died from cancer, a so-called natural cause of death. He was walking around and doing ok despite the diagnosis, before being treated aggressively with radiation and chemotherapy that completely destroyed his health... There's also the matter of very high rates of cancer in the area where he grew up, due to water contamination from the poisons used in local plantations- 2 out of 3 people in these towns developed cancer. Not natural at all.
In his last days, for pain relief the doctors gave him huge doses of NSAIDs known to cause kidney failure, also paracetamol (what Americans call acetaminophen) that damages the liver and kills many people every year. His cause of death was listed as acute renal failure. I believe the cancer treatments ultimately took his life, but cancer would likely have killed him eventually, only much more slowly. Unless something else happened first.
If an elderly lady dies from kidney disease, they say it's death by natural causes. Never mind the Methotrexate for her rheumatoid arthritis!
I think most causes of death are unnatural. I would argue that true completely natural causes of death are quite rare. Like death by animal, lightning strikes and natural disasters, a poisonous mushroom....
What makes a death natural or not? What do you think?
this comes up a lot especially in suicide discussion, because a good chunk of people say death by suicide is 'unnatural'. On closer inspection, many 'natural causes' of death aren't natural at all.
My grandfather is accepted to have died from cancer, a so-called natural cause of death. He was walking around and doing ok despite the diagnosis, before being treated aggressively with radiation and chemotherapy that completely destroyed his health... There's also the matter of very high rates of cancer in the area where he grew up, due to water contamination from the poisons used in local plantations- 2 out of 3 people in these towns developed cancer. Not natural at all.
In his last days, for pain relief the doctors gave him huge doses of NSAIDs known to cause kidney failure, also paracetamol (what Americans call acetaminophen) that damages the liver and kills many people every year. His cause of death was listed as acute renal failure. I believe the cancer treatments ultimately took his life, but cancer would likely have killed him eventually, only much more slowly. Unless something else happened first.
If an elderly lady dies from kidney disease, they say it's death by natural causes. Never mind the Methotrexate for her rheumatoid arthritis!
I think most causes of death are unnatural. I would argue that true completely natural causes of death are quite rare. Like death by animal, lightning strikes and natural disasters, a poisonous mushroom....
What makes a death natural or not? What do you think?
