LIVING LONGER OR JUST DYING SLOWER?

Seems like we've always had this way of turning some of our most brilliant breakthroughs into bumbling boomerangs. Agriculture good -- e-coli bad! Printing press good -- pornography bad! Radio good -- morning drive shows bad! Television good -- reality shows, well, so bad the language has yet to catch up!

Now however arrives perhaps the bitterest of boomerangs -- improved modern health-care. Is it helping us live longer or just die slower...?

Danial Callahan writes in The New Republic: "Among the elderly the struggle against disease has begun to look like the trench warfare in WWI: little real progress in taking enemy territory but enormous economic and human cost in trying to do so. Our main achievements consist of devising ways to marginally extend the lives of the very sick."

If you're under 50, you can stop reading. After all, dying has no place or meaning in your life. On the other hand, you won't be under 50 forever.

When people talk about the "population explosion" they should actually be talking about the "health explosion." Modern medicine has granted us much longer -- though frailer -- leases on life. So while the overall population is hardily growing in the advanced countries, the number of aged and ill is!

There are historic consequences to this first-time global phenomenon.

Germany's Bismarck sought to address this boomerang in Germany 150 years ago. Other European nations eventually did the same with various kinds of government coordinated health-care systems. Some work better than others. However here, the indefatigable spirit of Rugger Individualism, has vigorously outlasted the last frontier in which vigorously required it. And so today many here still utter such remarkable arguments: "Government keep your hands off my Medicare!"

Finding good jobs today may be a more deeply felt priority...but finding good health in the tomorrows to come will become a still greater priority. However, then I remember one of my media course professors who enjoyed reminding us: "No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for awhile you'll see why."