[poll id=10′]Thanks to Changing Aging reader Chuck Zimmerman for bringing a thought-provoking article written by physician Craig Bowron, a Twin Cities hospital physician. The article originally appeared in the Washington Post and appeared earlier this month in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It is entitled ‘On Not Going Gently Into That Good Night.’ Here are a few key excerpts from Dr. Bowron’s writing that bring us to our poll question above and a question at the very end of this post:

I’m a physician in a large hospital in Minneapolis, where I help care for patients struggling through the winter of their lives. We’ve got a lively spring unit, an obstetrical ward where fresh-faced tulips are popping up at all hours, but that’s not my specialty. As a hospitalist, I see adult patients of all ages and complexities, most of whom make good recoveries and return to life as they knew it. But taking care of the threadworn elderly, those facing an eternal winter with no green in sight, is definitely the most difficult thing I do.That’s because never before in history has it been so hard to fulfill our final earthly task: dying. It used to be that people were ‘visited’ by death. With nothing to fight it, we simply accepted it and grieved. Today, thanks to myriad medications and interventions that have been created to improve our health and prolong our lives, dying has become a difficult and often excruciatingly slow process … .To be clear: Everyone dies. There are no life-saving medications, only life-prolonging ones. To say that anyone chooses to die is, in most situations, a misstatement of the facts. But medical advances have created at least the façade of choice. It appears as if death has made a counteroffer and that the responsibility is now ours …If we can be honest and admit that we have no choice about dying, then the only thing we do have a say in are the circumstances. Everyone wants to grow old and die in his or her sleep, but the truth is that most of us will die in pieces. Most will be nibbled to death by piranhas, and the piranhas of senescence are wearing some very dull dentures. It can be a torturously slow process, with an undeniable end, and our instinct shouldn’t be to prolong it. If you were to walk by a Tilt-A-Whirl loaded with elderly riders and notice that all of them were dizzy to the point of vomiting, wouldn’t your instinct be to turn the ride off? Or at the very least slow it down? Mercy calls for it.This isn’t about euthanasia. It’s not about spiraling health care costs. It’s about the gift of life — and death. It is about living life and death with dignity, and letting go.In the past, the facade of immortality was claimed by Egyptian kings, egomaniacal monarchs and run-of-the mill psychopaths. But democracy and modern medical advances have made the illusion accessible to everyone. We have to rid ourselves of this distinctly Western notion before our nation’s obesity epidemic and the surge of aging baby boomers combine to form a tsunami of infirmity that may well topple our hospital system and wash it out to sea.At some point in life, the only thing worse than dying is being kept alive.

Changing Aging readers, What Do You Think?