A Message to the Nearly Converted [View All]

http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/5473

So, let’s imagine a morbidly obese person died. What was the cause of death?

Did the heart get clogged? Perhaps the lungs filled with fluid? Was it renal or kidney failure or a collapsed circulation system? Did a growing cyst or new cancer lead to a weakness in one of the organs? There are so many possibilities because just about every system was over-taxed.

The patient was in the hospital before expiring, and the doctors weren’t sure what to do. It was like one of those “wack-a-mole games” at an arcade. Addressing one problem, such as heart failure, worsened another, such as kidney failure. The problems kept popping up, and taking care of one simply brought another to the surface…faster and faster and faster until coping with so many became impossible. The medical staff, and ultimately the patient, were simply overwhelmed as everything seemed to go wrong at once.

I’ll ask the question again: “What was the cause of death?”

Common sense tells us that looking at the death of this person from the perspective of failing organs misses the point. The root cause of death was years of unhealthy habits.