steadily saltier and saltier, then, as more salt is added and water evaporates? It’s thought that they have now reached a balance where the salt content stays steady. Each year, much the same amount of salt is precipitated out of the oceans to settle on the ocean floor as is added to them by rivers.
Interestingly, ‘freshwater’ rivers tend to carry much more calcium, bicarbonate and silica than ‘saltwater’ in the sea. Seawater, however, contains much more sodium and chloride. One of the reasons for this is that marine life plays quite a significant role in the chemical balance of the oceans. A lot of calcium is taken out of seawater by the huge numbers of creatures such as molluscs, crustaceans, foraminifera and corals that use calcium to build skeletons and shells. Diatoms extract silica. Other creatures affect the chemical composition in subtler ways, such as snails that extract lead and sea cucumbers which secrete vanadium.
What is the point of using NHS money to keep old people alive?
(Economics, Cambridge)
As the author Anthony Powell said, ‘Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed’. After decades of hard labour and long service to the government in the form of taxes, you finally start to get ready for a deserved rest – and what happens? Your body starts to play up and your senses start to weaken – and you can only sleep properly in the middle of a conversation. To add insult to injury, some people start to say that you are placing a burden on the health service. No wonder you might begin to mutter bitterly every now and then!
Of course, there is a serious point here. Old people are as deserving of health resources as anyone, if not more so, because they have paid their tax contributions all their lives. The ethos of the NHS is that it provides free health care for all, and old people should not be exceptions to this policy. It’s quite simple; if they are ill, they should be treated.
Unfortunately, the NHS does not always live up to this ideal. A recent survey by the British Geriatric Society of British doctors suggested that more than half would beworried about how they might be treated when they were older – because of the way they see old people being treated now. Most doctors surveyed believe that older people are much less likely to have symptoms properly investigated. When old people feel ill, there is a tendency to assume that the problem is ‘just old age’ rather than examining them properly for signs of a treatable illness. Three-quarters of the doctors asserted that older people are less likely to be properly treated and referred to the right specialists.
Of course, many of the health problems faced by older people are an inevitable part of growing old. But this does not mean they cannot be treated in any way. Old people may also respond less well to treatment for some ailments than younger people do. It is therefore sometimes suggested that limited NHS resources should be steered towards younger people where they can give more obvious improvements to quality of life. Indeed, there is some evidence that this how the NHS does indeed respond, often treating old people as second-class patients. There are much longer waits, for instance, for hip and knee replacements, which affect primarily old people, than for other operations. Women over 70 are not automatically invited for breast screening as younger women are. And older women with breast cancer are less likely to receive the full range of cancer therapy than younger women.
In 2005, NICE, the body that produces guidelines on drug policy for the NHS, put the cat among the pigeons when it produced a report saying that, ‘When age is anindicator of benefit or risk, age discrimination may be appropriate’. It fired an angry response from Help the Aged, who retorted: ‘Assumptions that the life of an older person is somehow worth less, or that it is not important if someone who is nearing
Interestingly, ‘freshwater’ rivers tend to carry much more calcium, bicarbonate and silica than ‘saltwater’ in the sea. Seawater, however, contains much more sodium and chloride. One of the reasons for this is that marine life plays quite a significant role in the chemical balance of the oceans. A lot of calcium is taken out of seawater by the huge numbers of creatures such as molluscs, crustaceans, foraminifera and corals that use calcium to build skeletons and shells. Diatoms extract silica. Other creatures affect the chemical composition in subtler ways, such as snails that extract lead and sea cucumbers which secrete vanadium.
What is the point of using NHS money to keep old people alive?
(Economics, Cambridge)
As the author Anthony Powell said, ‘Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed’. After decades of hard labour and long service to the government in the form of taxes, you finally start to get ready for a deserved rest – and what happens? Your body starts to play up and your senses start to weaken – and you can only sleep properly in the middle of a conversation. To add insult to injury, some people start to say that you are placing a burden on the health service. No wonder you might begin to mutter bitterly every now and then!
Of course, there is a serious point here. Old people are as deserving of health resources as anyone, if not more so, because they have paid their tax contributions all their lives. The ethos of the NHS is that it provides free health care for all, and old people should not be exceptions to this policy. It’s quite simple; if they are ill, they should be treated.
Unfortunately, the NHS does not always live up to this ideal. A recent survey by the British Geriatric Society of British doctors suggested that more than half would beworried about how they might be treated when they were older – because of the way they see old people being treated now. Most doctors surveyed believe that older people are much less likely to have symptoms properly investigated. When old people feel ill, there is a tendency to assume that the problem is ‘just old age’ rather than examining them properly for signs of a treatable illness. Three-quarters of the doctors asserted that older people are less likely to be properly treated and referred to the right specialists.
Of course, many of the health problems faced by older people are an inevitable part of growing old. But this does not mean they cannot be treated in any way. Old people may also respond less well to treatment for some ailments than younger people do. It is therefore sometimes suggested that limited NHS resources should be steered towards younger people where they can give more obvious improvements to quality of life. Indeed, there is some evidence that this how the NHS does indeed respond, often treating old people as second-class patients. There are much longer waits, for instance, for hip and knee replacements, which affect primarily old people, than for other operations. Women over 70 are not automatically invited for breast screening as younger women are. And older women with breast cancer are less likely to receive the full range of cancer therapy than younger women.
In 2005, NICE, the body that produces guidelines on drug policy for the NHS, put the cat among the pigeons when it produced a report saying that, ‘When age is anindicator of benefit or risk, age discrimination may be appropriate’. It fired an angry response from Help the Aged, who retorted: ‘Assumptions that the life of an older person is somehow worth less, or that it is not important if someone who is nearing
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