A Matter of Life or Death?

12.3.2025:  Just this morning I read an article in Friday's Times by Dominic Maxwell, about the tragic death from leukaemia of Poppy Chancellor, only daughter of well-known actress Anna. She died in 2023 at the early age of thirty-six. The thing that struck me was this paragraph embedded in the text. "She was very allergic to medicine, she was a hypersensitive person; even with the Covid injections she came up in a terrible rash." We may presume she had both initial vaccine and boosters - for she refers to "injections"- in early 2021 to which apparently she reacted badly. Her serious illness was diagnosed in April 2023. She died on September 29th the same year. Nowhere is the possibility of a connection between injections and fatal illness raised. Of course we have no idea if there was or not, but shouldn't it at least be considered? I wonder how many other less famous persons, have followed a similar harrowing ordeal and path, unheralded, un-noticed?

See also: https://veaterecosan.blogspot.com/2024/11/what-happens-to-coroners-reports-nearly.html

"I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I've learned thatyou can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life. I've learned that making a living is not the same thing as making a life. I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on bothhands; you need to be able to throw some things back. I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I've learned that I still have a lot to learn. I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Author: Angelou Quotes

Some time ago: Incredibly, over 100,000 die every year in the USA from drug overdoses, and that doesn't include all the deaths from prescribed ones. Nor does it include the health and disease conditions associated with other addictive behaviour related to alcohol and tobacco. Around fifty thousand commit suicide and about twenty thousand known murders. This amounts to a whole load of misery hardly conceivable. It points to profound societal and personal issues that are embedded in the human response to life and how we cope with it. Some might say it points to the disintegration of the American way of life; a way that is exported to the rest of the world as part of its political and economic hegemony. For a hundred years or more it has been the model that other countries aspired to but internally and externally, that is no longer the case. It seems to have lost its ethical way, its self confidence. Britain has imported many elements of its culture but the 'special relationship' appears very fragile when American politicians threaten to destroy our economy if or when we enforce the decisions of the ICC! Just one example of the import is the fast food eating habit that has created the massive health problem of obesity, now affecting up to half the British population. Reliance on drugs to relieve the pain of living is another. Once religion was said to be the 'opiate of the masses'. Now when religion has been superceded by a new age philosophy or nothing, only opiates - and a whole range of other addictive drugs - remain!

15.3.2025: "In England, the growth of men's life expectancy at birth between 2021 and 2023 fell by 1.7 years compared with 2017 to 2019, while it fell by 1.1 years in Wales. The figures are more alarming for women, as the growth of life expectancy dropped by 1.9 years in England and 2.2 years in Wales at this time." Well I never! What a surprise? Now I wonder what could have caused that?

COMMENTS

Rik Evans

A very sensible and well considered statement Andrew George .

Katie Kirk

Mary Hawkins, recently nominated for the Women Of Cornwall competition, was the most highly decorated nurse in the country. She had a very pragmatic outlook, coloured by her perspective of nursing in warzones and working with displaced people in the Middle East. She was resolute in her convictions, like you she worked incredibly hard all her life, and used her agency in any given situation, to the maximum effect.

She would want me to recall how, when she herself was slowly dying, she sat me down in her small, windowless room at Trevaylor and expressed with great frustration and sorrow how ridiculous it was that a person in pain, but still very much in their right mind, who was asking to leave this world peacefully and with dignity, at a time of their choosing, could not do so because of some ridiculous laws.

She wanted me to pass this on in some way, which I vowed I would. Then we put the matter to one side while I read her Beatrix Potter stories before I went back to college.

I don't recall what I learned in class that day, it paled into insignificance.

There must be found, some way to fathom the complexities of scenarios where it could otherwise be abused.