It is well and long established that the vast majority of medical resources, and an enormously disproportionate allocation of health care dollars, are directed at end-of-life care. I am by no means arguing against such expenditures - my loved ones have been beneficiaries of them, too. But often, despite all such effort, only indignity is propagated, and death is not much forestalled. Almost never does such effort restore anything like true vitality.
Somehow, our culture manages to peddle both tanning salons, and wrinkle cream. We desperately seek longevity, while raising children potentially subject to a shorter life expectancy than their parents. We hang on every headline hinting at more years in life, and let the established means of adding life to years, and defending our native span, slip through our fingers.
This fixation, and the deus ex machina intercessions it invites, have brought us a widening gap between life span, and health span. Life expectancy has, indeed, been rising here in the U.S.- but so, too, the burden of chronic disease. We are living longer-but generally, not better. As we succumb to ever more chronic disease at ever younger age, yet do all we can to keep death at bay, we spend an ever greater portion of our lives not truly living fully and well. Not dying is not the same as living.
-- David L. Katz
