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"Life or Quality of Life?"

I recently had a sexual health seminar at my school. After being split up into loads of little groups we got whisked away to different class rooms where we talked about a variety of issues varrying from sexuality, contraception to STI's. What I didn't understand though was why people who had the terminal illness of HIV decided to go on drug cocktails and so on? Some people who had HIV there took up to 50 tablets a day and extra tablets for all the side effects. I was completely stunned by this. Why prolong the inevitable if you will be too sick to experience anything within this extra time. This is one of the occassions in which I feel voluntary euthanasia should be allowed. However I don't even think they should resort to that. If I contracted a disease such as Cancer or HIV I would obviously try and variety of treatments to begin with in desperation to live but as the end grows nearer and nearer and you feel sicker and sicker. It's no surprise that people with these terminal illnesses spend months in hospitals feeling like death until he comes to take them away. So I see no point in going on drugs that prevent you from doing everything you want to do in your final few days just to live in pain for longer. We were actually told that people with HIV lived for on average 10 years before it turned to AIDs and the flu or whatever killed them. However normally in those first 10 years they go on a variety of pills to prolong their life when really they are just feeling like hell the entire time.

I've heard lots of people refuse to go on the drugs and live out their lives feeling better and doing more things. Although they may not live as long their quality of life is much higher than that of those on the pills and in the end the result is the same, death.

I don't quite know why I started this topic and I don't quite know why I forgot how to use proper English grammar, spelling and so on but in the end the question is -

*If you were diagnosed with a terminal illness would you chose quality of life over length of life?



N.b. This is in no way meant to be offensive and I hope I have not caused any.

You do realise that you can be HIV+ and not have AIDS don't you? Of course, I shouldn't be surprised that your ideal solution would be some kind of genocide...

Help us out, are you taking yourself seriously right now or not?

AIDS, the crisis disease of the 21st century.

Harsh as it may sound, the fastest way to rid the world of this plague is to kill off everyone who is currently infected by it. And I'm fairly certain that in some corners, this is being discussed as a back pocket possibility.

Not that I'm advocating that this should be the solution. Saw a clip from some programme I wasn't really watching the other night that seemed to be themed on AIDS, and there was this guy sitting around a table of other AIDS sufferers saying "I'm a man living with AIDS, not dying with it", the documentary went on to mention that he "lost his very public battle with AIDS" only weeks later.

Personally, I think the only reason that AIDS sufferers haven't been piled high and left to burn is because of the money the disease generates for pharmaceutical companies.

But answering the topic title, I'd go for quality of life. Life is hard enough to enjoy as it is, if I were permanently debilitated or disabled, I'd struggle to hold onto enough reasons to go on living.

Yes I would choose quality of life over length of life.

I'll have to come back to this later.

Remember I said it was illogical in my opinion not that it was illogical full stop. I still don't see the point of subjecting yourself to pain and misery to temporarily avoid the unavoidable.

Not illogical, just people who want to cling to the last shards of their' lives, however poor the quality, and I suppose the fear and unknown of the after life is a void the just cannot face quite yet. They would rather face pills and life than death and uncertainty. Of course, they will still die (some day), as will we all...

Yeh it is a kind of morbid topic and I guess I must be wrong about cancer but with the terminal illness of HIV in the 4 hour talk we learned a lot about it and you simply get worse and worse because of the drugs that keep you alive. If you don't take any drugs you're fine but take them and they give you headaches, diarhea(sp?), incontanance and so on depending on how your body reacts to them and as I said you can be having up to 50 pills a day! What are you supposed to do if you are constantly downing pills and water just for them to make you sick, you vomit them up and have to take more pills for that side effect. So ilogical in my opinion.

You wrote in there, somewhere that "If you conracted something like cancer, you would want to live for as long as possible, getting sicker and sicker". My family has had a long history of 'deaths by cancer' and it is certainly not an illness where you 'get sicker and sicker'. My gran got it about four years ago now, and died. She had had cancer all her life but it had suddenly developed into a brain tumour. She felt fine even when she knew about the tumour, it certainly didn't make her 'sick'.
She just died quite peacefully, the only difference to that of an age-related death was that my gran died earlier and spent the last few weeks worrying, which is part of the suffering that combines itself with cancer.
As for HIV, I do not know enough about it to comment fairly/to the correct symptons and sufferings.
Feeling kind of sad now...

I recently had a sexual health seminar at my school. After being split up into loads of little groups we got whisked away to different class rooms where we talked about a variety of issues varrying from sexuality, contraception to STI's. What I didn't understand though was why people who had the terminal illness of HIV decided to go on drug cocktails and so on? Some people who had HIV there took up to 50 tablets a day and extra tablets for all the side effects. I was completely stunned by this. Why prolong the inevitable if you will be too sick to experience anything within this extra time. This is one of the occassions in which I feel voluntary euthanasia should be allowed. However I don't even think they should resort to that. If I contracted a disease such as Cancer or HIV I would obviously try and variety of treatments to begin with in desperation to live but as the end grows nearer and nearer and you feel sicker and sicker. It's no surprise that people with these terminal illnesses spend months in hospitals feeling like death until he comes to take them away. So I see no point in going on drugs that prevent you from doing everything you want to do in your final few days just to live in pain for longer. We were actually told that people with HIV lived for on average 10 years before it turned to AIDs and the flu or whatever killed them. However normally in those first 10 years they go on a variety of pills to prolong their life when really they are just feeling like hell the entire time.

I've heard lots of people refuse to go on the drugs and live out their lives feeling better and doing more things. Although they may not live as long their quality of life is much higher than that of those on the pills and in the end the result is the same, death.

I don't quite know why I started this topic and I don't quite know why I forgot how to use proper English grammar, spelling and so on but in the end the question is -

*If you were diagnosed with a terminal illness would you chose quality of life over length of life?



N.b. This is in no way meant to be offensive and I hope I have not caused any.