On the face of it, ambulances appear to be a positive development in human progress. They provide emergency medical services in cases of accident and severe illness.
But underneath the surface of good Samaritans, something rotten and entirely unethical looms.
Because ambulances are the cause of millions of destroyed lives of those who would prefer death.
Once I am dead, I have no problems. Ideas of suffering after death belong to the realm of the mystical. And even from a mystical perspective, one's fate would not be worse if one dies in an accident rather than having one's death prolonged in an ICU.
Once I am dead, I have no problems. I feel no pain, no disappointment. I also won't feel the excitement of great sex, but that isn't very relevant at that point.
A large number of people who are saved by ambulances are unconscious by the time the ambulance arrives. And without being brought to a hospital with an ICU, they would just die.
From the perspective of the person whom the ambulance staff considers a patient, this would be just fine. An accident happened, or a stroke, or a heart attack, and one is unconscious. And without interference from an ambulance, one would die.
Great. Nothing wrong with that. The passage from life into death happened suddenly, the pain was brief, and so was the period of awareness of the dying process.
A good death.
But then an ambulance arrived on the scene. The patient was resuscitated, rushed to an ICU, intubated, suctioned, and artificially kept alive.
And after some extended period of unconsciousness, the patient opens his eyes to return to a life that often, from then on, involves prolonged suffering from medical technologies, robbing the person of a good death.
No future worth living for. I just hope that when I have a bad accident, or suffer a severe stroke or heart attack, I will just be out of reach of any ambulance or ICU.