You can prevent Heart Attacks
You can prevent Strokes
You can prevent Colon Cancer
You can prevent Cervical Cancer
You can prevent Breast Cancer
You can prevent Prostate Cancer
Really? Well perhaps
You can prevent Syphilis
You can prevent the Friends of Syphilis
You can prevent smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, chicken pox, meningitis, influenza, hepatitis, diphtheria, whooping cough
You can prevent Diabetes
You can prevent Complications of Diabetes
You can prevent Hip fractures
You can prevent Diarrheal Illness
You can prevent Nosocomial Infections
Really? Really, just wash your hands
But you cannot prevent death.
Saying that we can prevent death is preposterous.
Indeed, the word “prevention” doesn’t even apply to death
You can delay death
You can stall death
You can prolong life
But it just doesn’t make sense to say that you can prevent death.
You can prevent Strokes
You can prevent Colon Cancer
You can prevent Cervical Cancer
You can prevent Breast Cancer
You can prevent Prostate Cancer
Really? Well perhaps
You can prevent Syphilis
You can prevent the Friends of Syphilis
You can prevent smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, chicken pox, meningitis, influenza, hepatitis, diphtheria, whooping cough
You can prevent Diabetes
You can prevent Complications of Diabetes
You can prevent Hip fractures
You can prevent Diarrheal Illness
You can prevent Nosocomial Infections
Really? Really, just wash your hands
But you cannot prevent death.
Saying that we can prevent death is preposterous.
Indeed, the word “prevention” doesn’t even apply to death
You can delay death
You can stall death
You can prolong life
But it just doesn’t make sense to say that you can prevent death.
Comments
The book 'Republic of Suffering' is a great example of a major shift in how a culture views dying. It is about the American Civil War.
Christian, a revival of the ars moriendi, "art of dying," is a good idea, but I'm not sure how this can be accomplished. So much of our culture is oriented toward "the science of not-dying," whatever that is in Latin. Also, I'm concerned that the idea of the "good death" may be a Christian (religion, not you personally) Anglo idea, and anathema to other cultures. In Chinese culture, for example, discussion of death is so avoided that even words that sound vaguely like death have negative connotations.