Carpe diem cras. Seize the day tomorrow.

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"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”— Mark Twain

The Emanuel family –– including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel –– sure knows how to stir the pot. Rahm’s older brother, Ezekiel, recently published a hugely controversial essay, “Why I hope to die at 75,” in The Atlantic. Emanuel is 57, so by his logic, he has 18 years to go, despite his being perfectly healthy.

According to Emanuel, a Center for American Progress bioethicist and a University of Pennsylvania professor, we reach the end of the road, so to speak, at 75. After that, it’s all downhill.

Emanuel says he will not kill himself at 75. He will, however, refuse medical treatment thereafter, including his annual flu shot. He wants death to take him as quickly as possible so he can avoid the regressive infirmity and dementia that, he believes, inevitably come late in life.

Emanuel is called a brilliant scientist. Forgive me for saying this, but I think he’s a fool.

His essay pooh-poohs the earnest efforts of average Americans to stay healthy into old age by exercising regularly, eating healthy, and avoiding alcohol and tobacco. “Americans,” he writes, “seem to be obsessed with exercising, doing mental puzzles, consuming various juice and protein concoctions, sticking to strict diets, and popping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to cheat death and prolong life as long as possible. This has become so pervasive that it now defines a cultural type: what I call the American immortal. I reject this aspiration.”

Emanuel telegraphs a dangerous message: Why bother trying to stay healthy? You’re going to die anyway, so you’re wasting your time eating right and exercising.

He offers studies suggesting that we grow increasingly dysfunctional after 75. Duh. At the same time, he ignores the growing body of empirical evidence that suggests we need not resign ourselves to lives cloistered in nursing homes late in life.

We can live to the end.

Am I suggesting that we will be as vital at 75, 86 or 97 as we were at 50, 35 or 18? Of course not. What Emanuel fails to note, however, is that infirmity and dementia are not givens. Yes, serious illness –– heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s –– can incapacitate us. None, though, is inevitable. 

None.

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