Join the long dead club!

  • Thread starter Thread starter AlexGTV
  • 13 comments
  • 933 views

Did science keep you alive?

  • Yep, lucky me!

    Votes: 12 48.0%
  • Nope, I would be alive in the middle ages.

    Votes: 13 52.0%

  • Total voters
    25

AlexGTV

(Banned)
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Greece
Salonica
Are you now alive because of the intervention of medicine? Meaning you otherwise wouldn't have in no way survived?

Join the club!

I realised I should be dead from appendicitis a decade ago if I was not lucky enough to be born in the right era.

I have mixed feelings of gratitude towards science and a conscern I somewhat "cheated" evolution because I can now pass my faulty genes to kids with appendicitis who would have kids with the same disease and so on.

Did you deserve to die or it would be unfair if you where born in the "wrong era. In those cases it isn't the fit who survive, it is the lucky.

And we my friends our lucky!
 
If I was born 65,000,000 years ago, I would have had a meteor land on my head, does that count?
 
No! It goes the other way around. If you are alive without any emergency operation etc. it means you could have survived as well in the middle ages, all other being equal.
 
Not me, but my friend should definitely not be alive. He was born while his mother was on birth control, first. Then, while playing soccer around 16, he got kicked in the head and died. He was revived in the ambulance. Now, he is a volunteer firefighter, and has gotten a knee to the face off of a second story. He suffered some serious head injuries, and is still here.
 
Not yet has science kept me alive.(Well, I did get a throat operation when I was 4 but I don't think that counts)
 
It's hard to judge these type of things. You could die from lack of hygiene or good quality food or water. Lack of shelter and lack of specific medical equipment or knowledge. For example, without help you could die from a simple infection.
I have yet to receive serious life threatening medical assistance, yet I have had some help in the past. It's not easy to judge these kind of things. Deep, man.

Sometimes I wish I was born about 20 years earlier, but ultimately we can't complain. We are all fortunate to simple things in today's world that wasn't available in the past.
 
Oh yeah, I was born with a heart murmur. For those who don't know, it's a small pinhole (born with a broken heart-awwwwww). Anyway, it is fine now, and has been, but when I was younger I needed to take things for my blood, get it checked, I may have died as a baby. :scared:
 
Without medication I'd probably be locked away for being insane, then again, in the dark ages I think most people were a bit crazy anyway. I might have fit in well.

Being allergic to penicillin nearly killed me but that was the fault of modern science, or at least the doctor who gave it to me.
 
I think I would still live without my medication, but not that well. Also, I don't understand why anyone would feel "guilty" for surviving only because of science, most normal people would be grateful...
 
Sometimes I wish I was born about 20 years earlier,

How old are you?
20 years isn't really a long time. Very good chance someone here at GTP was born 20 years before you, maybe even myself.

Cheers Shaun.
 
Mononucleosis ended my high school athletic career. Without antibiotics and other prescriptions I'm sure it would've been more dire than that. Two of my siblings have had pneumonia. I guess us three wouldn't have made it on the Oregon Trail.
 
I voted yes by accident, but I can't really say for sure. I haven't had anything too dire happen to me, I've had a couple strep throat infections, and some stitches from two dog bites (two separate events). I would probably still be alive in the middle ages, but I may have lost a finger if I lived then. I cut my finger pretty deep at work (cut a large chunk of skin clean off), and I knew exactly how to treat it. Perhaps if I had been born in the middle ages I wouldn't know how to treat it and I'd lose it to infection.

My brother has benefited more from modern medical science than I have, he had his tonsils removed, and also had a rather interesting operation on his eye. He had a mole on his eye for a long time, and our doctor said it was fine, but if it changed size or shape it had to be removed. It started to rapidly change later on, and our family doctor referred him to an eye specialist to check it out. He decided to have it removed, because it may have been cancerous. When he got his surgery done, they put him to sleep, put some numbing drops in his eye, and then basically cut it out with a scalpel. Modern medical technology is just incredible, the fact that they could literally cut that out of his eye, with little to no pain to him (he was fine two days later), is just incredible.
 
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Not me, but my mother.
She would be dead if it wasn't for medicine. High blood pressure, terminal incurable disease (Becets disease), aneurysm, vasculitus, deaf in one ear due on Becets, fluid retention, collapsed lungs, heart problems, lost a kindey, bowel problems, blockages in leg arteries...and she's still kickin'.
 
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