A Doctor Remotely Told A Patient He Was Going To Die Using A Video-Link Robot (bbc.com) 223
dryriver quotes the BBC: A doctor in California told a patient he was going to die using a robot with a video-link screen. Ernest Quintana, 78, was at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fremont when a doctor — appearing on the robot's screen — informed him that he would die within a few days. A family friend wrote on social media that it was "not the way to show value and compassion to a patient". The hospital says it "regrets falling short" of the family's expectations.
Mr Quintana died the next day.
Mr Quintana died the next day.
Where's the surprise here? (Score:5, Insightful)
For years, here on /., there have been stories about how people use technology - I think the first time was Radio Shack laying off employees: https://slashdot.org/story/06/... [slashdot.org]
I guess that you can see why people use technology to avoid unpleasant situations, but they should be highlighted as being inappropriate with the message being that like a Stark, "The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword."
This isn't even high tech - just a phone call (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that it was connected to a robot is just to make a clickbait headline.
Re:Where's the surprise here? (Score:4, Insightful)
The doctor wasn't the one who gave him the disease. I'm having trouble finding out what this "chronic lung disease" was - it seems to be omitted in all the news reports (the quality of journalism has fallen markedly in the last few decades). If it was smoking-related, the guy did it to himself.
The appropriate catchphrase here is "shooting the messenger." I get that the family and the guy were upset to find out he'd be dying so soon, but there's no reason to take it out on the doctor. The doctor was only the messenger.
Put another way, would they rather have found out via video conference and had 48 hours to spend together and prepare for the end? Or would they have preferred to lose 10%-20% of that remaining time waiting until a doctor could deliver the news in person? Given the short timeframe of the diagnosis, I think informing them ASAP by any means possible should've been the priority.
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So there's a total of one doctor in the whole hospital? I get it that "his doctor" wasn't available when the test results came in, but a visit from an associate who's on duty would still be more personal. The video conference could have happened between the two doctors so they could get the story right.
wasn't a robot you tards (Score:3, Insightful)
A remotely controlled machine is not a robot. The voice telling him he would die was the doctors. He spoke the truth. If you can't handle the truth of someone near death's fate stay out of hospitals. Life is cruel and a bitch, then you die.
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Not quite, robots can be internally or externally controlled from a control unit. whether that control unit is a computer or a human is irrelevant to whether the thing itself is a robot. It's a tele-presence robot.
Problem is the doctor, not the patient (Score:2, Interesting)
If you can't handle the truth of someone near death's fate stay out of hospitals.
Likewise, if you cannot be bothered to take the time to tell your dying patient the truth in person then don't be a doctor. The problem here is not that the patient can't handle the truth it's that the doctor either didn't care enough to tell his patient in person or was, himself, unable to handle a serious conversation like this.
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It's not even that. The guy died. This is his relatives complaining, not the patient.
Think about it (Score:2)
Expectation, not right (Score:2)
You have no "right" to a familiar face telling you bad news.
I never said that you did have a right to this. When you go to a doctor you expect to have someone who cares about treating you. As such it is not at all unreasonable to expect your doctor to care enough to deliver serious news like this in person. This is clearly not medical malpractice it is a doctor being an arsehole much like someone who breaks up over text or email.
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Reminds me of one of the few dead serious moments of scrubs,
"Turn around. Turn aroun
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I find it hard to judge medical staff harshly on this given that the population in general can't deal with less complex, less traumatic and less final issues.
The population in general also can't perform complex medical procedures. Would you likewise find it hard to judge medical staff who can't perform these procedures competently harshly too? My dad was a GP and telling people bad news like this is an important part of the job. I have a lot of sympathy for people not wanting to do something like that but then they should realise that this is something they cannot do and not sign up for a job that requires it.
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Life is cruel and a bitch
That's certainly how it seems to dipshits.
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Exactly. Life is life (nana na nana), people make it cruel.
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So which part of the spectrum are you on?
As usual technology is a red herring. (Score:2)
The problem isn't that the doctor used a video link to tell this guy he was going to die. The problem is the guy didn't have access to health care that would have told him he was seriously ill sooner than 24 hours before he was going to die.
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telefactor (Score:2)
For some reason the term telefactor has never caught on. That's the correct name, if you don't want to just say computer screen, or video conference. (Did it have manipulators? Then it's a telefactor.)
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Get a dictionary, then you can be a pedant.
Robot: (noun) a machine resembling a human being and able to replicate certain human movements and functions automatically.
Re: wasn't a robot you tards (Score:4, Funny)
Pedant (noun): a person who reads definitions to other people from the dictionary
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No it is not a robot, does not meet the Oxford definition of one I posted. It is merely a remote controlled machine. Putting servos to control your car's rack and pinion steering rather than a direct mechanical connection doesn't make your car a robot either.
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No it is not a robot, does not meet the Oxford definition of one I posted.
Maybe you should try reading more than one line out of the dictionary.
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Robot: (noun) a machine resembling a human being and able to replicate certain human movements and functions automatically.
Idiot: (noun) a person who reads dictionary definition 1 and completely ignores the very much relevant definitions 2 and 3 from the same dictionary.
Supreme Idiot: (noun) a person who wouldn't even need to go to definition 2 and instead would be proven wrong by definition 1.1.
iggymanz: (proper noun) Pseudo-name of a supreme idiot who quotes one dictionary only to find he would be proven wrong by selecting another dictionary and still stopping at definition 1.
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That was from the Oxford dictionary. Someone is a moron, and it's you.
Doctor Joke #1 (Score:5, Funny)
I went to the doctor and he examined me and ran a battery of tests. His video link robot came back into the room and said, "Mr Ratzo, you're crazy." I told him I wanted a second opinion and he said, "You're ugly, too."
But the video link robot did suggest that I start doing yoga. When I asked him why, he said, "So you can kiss your ass goodbye."
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"Doctor, tell me the truth! How long do I have to live?"
"You have... ten."
"Ten what, doctor? Months? Weeks? Days?!"
*checks wristwatch* "Ten... nine... eight... seven..."
Re:Doctor Joke #1 (Score:5, Funny)
A dying man smells his favorite oatmeal raisin cookies cooking downstairs. It takes all the strength he has left but he gets up from the bed and crawls down the stairs.
He sees the cookies cooling on the counter and staggers over to them. As he reaches for one, his wife's wrinkled hand reaches out, smacks his and she yells:
"No, you can't have those! They're for the funeral!"
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A beautiful woman walks into a doctor's office one day and the doctor is bowled over by her stunningly good looks and all his professionalism goes right out the window.
He tells her to take off her pants, she does, and he starts rubbing her thighs.
"Do you know what I am doing?" asks the doctor? "Yes, checking for abnormalities." she replies.
He tells her to take off her shirt and bra, she takes them off. The doctor begins rubbing her breasts and asks, "Do you know what I am doing now?", she replies, "Yes, checking for cancer."
Finally, he tells her to take off her panties, lays her on the table, gets on top of her and starts having sex with her. He says to her, "Do you know what I am doing now?"
She replies, "Yes, getting herpes - that's why I'm here!"
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A woman goes to a new gynecologist for her yearly.
When he sees her vagina, he's just shocked, despite having seen literally more than a hundred thousand vaginas over his career. Can't stop himself, he says: "God damn that's a huge hole, WTF have you been doing?'
He then recovers his composure and spends the rest of the appointment apologizing.
She's obviously disturbed, and self conscious about her vag. When she gets home she lays a mirror on the floor takes off her pants and stands over it, looking an
That story list... (Score:5, Funny)
I like the story immediately preceding this one is "Is Bad Customer Service More Profitable Than Good?"
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Seems pretty relevant. Although to be fair, in this case here they already knew they would be losing the customer. They will probably not get any business from his family and friends in the future though.
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They will probably not get any business from his family and friends in the future though.
As if Americans have much choice about where they get their medical coverage. Most get the insurance their employer provides and can't afford to go "outside of network" because it's ridiculously expensive to do so. With this one being KP, they can only go to a KP facility and they'll get the providers KP decides they'll get.
Re:That story list... (Score:4, Informative)
The full story is that the doctors did see the patient earlier in the day, and the patient died the next day. The doctor said he had just received the MRI results. Unclear if the same doctor saw him earlier in the day or if it was other doctors.
So, wait until morning to give the news, or give the news immediately? The fault here seems more with not having a nurse or other professional in the room at the time (which was the standard procedure).
People need to read more than the headlines and summaries.
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It was being done because the alternative was a phone call or waiting until the next day. The "robot" was just a video phone on wheels is all.
Cowardice (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I get that telling this to a patient is hard. But if you cannot do it in person, then do not be a doctor or do pathology were patients are already dead.
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The person that failed this guy was not the expert on the telepresence device, although he should probably have refused to do this in this way. The doctor that failed him was his own, on-site doctor.
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The doctor that failed him was his own, on-site doctor.
I'm sure there was absolutely nothing better he or she could be doing with his or her time than telling someone who had none left that same very fact. There's a finite number of doctors with a finite amount of time and that time is probably of more use elsewhere.
In fairytale world, I'm sure the doctor could have come and spent several hours with the man giving him some life affirming realization so that he was able to come to terms with his own mortality and find peace in his final moments. Meanwhile in
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" There's a finite number of doctors "
And whose fault is that?
Death. The same jerk responsible for the other part of the story.
But he grants us Evolution in return, so it isn't all bad.
Re:Cowardice (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it was just pragmatism, not cowardice. The patient died the very next day. It's very possible that the patient was already in hospice care and that the doctor couldn't get to the patient in time to tell him the diagnosis in person.
In the case of my mother, the homecare hospice nurse is the one that told us that she only had three days left to live (based on the discoloration of her skin). And her prediction was remarkably accurate. She had been battling lung cancer for the last three years, so it's not like this came as a surprise to any of us. But the headsup from the nurse is what allowed my brother to fly in to see her one very last time.
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They could have had a nurse physically present when the robo-doc gave the news.
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OH, you're the same AC. You need to have a talk with your meth dealer, he seems to have sold you a cheap substitute.
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Actually, I read the full article. You may have read a different article.
In any case, even the article seems to be contradicting itself. It shows a picture of the robot taken by the actual family, but in that picture, there is someone in blue with a stethoscope standing behind the robot. So the hospital seems to think that their policy was violated and they're apologizing for it, but based on the picture alone, that doesn't seem to really be the case.
So you may be right about "Their gripe is that the origin
Re: Cowardice (Score:2)
So you're saying it would have been better for the doctor to not tell the video consult patient that he's about to die, rather tell him to make an in-person appointment knowing the patient is likely not going to live long enough to make the appointment?!? The patient in this case died the next day, so even if they had an appointment that day they wouldn't have made it.
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It is even worse than that, the decision that had been made was that nothing could be done except comfort care; waiting to tell him would have meant withholding the comfort care, too! He would have suffered more that way.
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Yes, I get that telling this to a patient is hard. But if you cannot do it in person, then do not be a doctor or do pathology were patients are already dead.
I dunno. I could really care less who told me I was going to check out. Way too much is made of the sensitivity aspect, and half of the other crap around death. I cringe when I read about how so and so "passed away peacefully surrounded by family". Screw that. I've done the other side of that equation enough times, and it's seldom all that peaceful, and I intend to check out all by myself.
So if someone on Mars tells me I've only got a few hours, or in person - I'll thank them, have a shot of tequila, s
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That is ok, and I think I lean your way. But for many people it is different.
Re:Cowardice (Score:5, Informative)
Did you just read the headline, or only read the summary? Read the article maybe. The patient died the next day, the phone call was made apparently soon after getting the MRI results and the phone call was in the evening and the doctor had presumably gone home. So, wait until the next day to give an update to the patient, do a voice only call, or do a video call?
For me I'd rather get the news sooner that the condition was inoperable. More time to get other family notified. The real fault was that this was done without having an additional medical professional in the room at the time which was standard procedure for the hospital.
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Can I interest you in a jump to conclusions mat? Or did you out yourself as the doctor in question? It has to be one of those two since based on your ability to come up with that conclusion you either know, or think you know far more than the very little and only one sided information given in TFA.
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But if you cannot do it in person, then do not be a doctor
This doc screwed up by not asking someone who was there to handle it. Hospitals all have end of life counselors, clergy and social workers available to help.
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Attention Idiot, the hospital was NOT completely un-staffed. The correct handling would be for the remote doctor to arrange for another doctor or nurse to be physically present when the news was delivered (note, according to TFA, that is also hospital policy). Also, they should have waited for the patient's wife to be there.
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The patient was in a hospital but there wasn't a doctor available?
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Have you ever been in a hospital with more doctors than patients? I haven't.
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The whole thing was botched badly. The attending doctor should have been there. The expert on the telepresence device should have refused to do this without him.
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Well the question is, which is worse... if someone's got 48 hours to live... want to spend 12 of them tracking down the right guy?
Maybe a better option would have been to fill in some other nurse, psychologist, or anyone else on staff to deliver the news.
You can say all you want that 'the guys primary physician never should have left when he had someone in that level of condition'. Fact is he's a doctor, fact is it's a hospital. If I've heard any advice from people that have worked in hospitals it is... yo
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Naw, they understand the situation and that time is a limited resource. You're just an asshole calling names.
I don't mind assholes in the general case, but you should really own your ideas more; worry about your own "high" if that is the root of the problem.
You'd rather some other patient get less care so that something that is routinely done over the phone could be done in person by the highest demand person available. I think that's disgusting. If you were in charge, you'd be a murderer with that directiv
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This is slashdot. Everyone here is automatically an expert in all fields. We've got so much expertise that normally we can render a quality opinion based only on a headline. There's really not much reason to even hire scientists any more since any new scientific discovery will be shot down within minutes of appearing on slashdot.
It's Kaiser (Score:4, Interesting)
It's Kaiser Permanente. What did you expect? Resources wasted seeing a patient in person, when they were going to quit paying fees in a few days anyway?
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Naw, Kaiser Permanente is a great system. Lower cost but with good care and preventative medicine.
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Naw, Kaiser Permanente is a great system. Lower cost but with good care and preventative medicine.
I have a family member who worked for Kaiser and quit in disgust at their unsafe care practices.
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Did you read my words? Clearly not. I didn't blame the doctor at all. I blamed Kaiser.
Coincidence? I don't think so....... (Score:2)
The article immediately preceding: "Is Bad Customer Service More Profitable Than Good?"
Got my first prostrate exam a few months ago (Score:2)
As the doc left the nurse came in and said "Who was that?"
/ here all week
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I was diagnosed with a very contagious disease a while ago. The doctor told me that I would be put on a strict regimen of pizza and pancakes. I asked if that would really help my condition.
"I don't know", he said. "But that's the only food we can slide under the door."
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There's an old SNL skit like that but instead a guy is getting checked for a hernia. In the end he's surrounded by a crowd of people all with a hand cupping his bits and asking him to cough when the real doctor walks in and scares them off.
O.K., But what were the other options? (Score:2)
What would have had to happen for the doctor to visit this patient in person? For instance, was he doing lift-saving surgery that afternoon in another hospital? Or just that he had many patients to make contact with in the short time between two other surgeries? There are many situations that would mean that this doctor could not have personally visited this patient.
So, what should the doctor have done? Not used the tech would mean not making contact with the patient at all. Had a nurse go see them, a nurse
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Yes, on someone with elevatord blood pressure.
TY,IHAW, etc.
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So, what should the doctor have done?
Gotten a nurse or even the hospital chaplain to accompany the bot when he delivered the bad news.
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Incorrect, go read it again.
Then learn to speak with civility.
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An earlier response from someone who appeared to have read the article said the doctor wasn't in the hospital at the time he got the MRI results. He not only wasn't someone the family had never met, he, himself, may never have met the patient. He was the MRI specialist. And he didn't get those results until he got home.
So....(a plausible scenario)
The guy's going to die soon, definitely within the next week, but could be before morning for all I know. Should I wait until I get in to work to pass on the n
Good news, you've got 10 days to live.. (Score:5, Funny)
"That number is in binary and I've been trying to get in touch with you since yesterday"
Ethics matter (Score:2)
Just because we can do a thing, does not mean that we should do that thing. This is going to become more and more of an issue in the years to come.
simpsons did it (kind of) (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Pure clickbait story (Score:5, Insightful)
This story is pure one-sided clickbait.
There's no way that this man, and his family, were not aware that his condition was critical. The doctor (who might have been hundreds of miles away) made the correct decision to inform the patient immediately of his prognosis.
Being there in person wouldn't have changed a thing. Quite the contrary - the patient very probably would have died waiting for the doctor to show up in person to tell him exactly what he and his family almost certainly already knew - that his life was about to end.
This is a story designed to make an insurance company look evil. There may be plenty of valid reasons to hate Kaiser Permanente, but this incident was not one of them. Note from the article: ""The evening video tele-visit was a follow-up to earlier physician visits." The family in fact did have previous personal consultations, where I'm sure they were told what to expect if the test results came out badly. The tele-visit was the doctor following up with them in as timely a manner as possible.
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My oral surgeon used an ancient VHS tape to tell me having my wisdom teeth removed might fuck up all feeling in my jaw. Who do I see about being outraged?
You're absolutely right. This story is another tempest in a teacup.
Kaiser-Permanente personal service (Score:3)
Had Mr. Quintana's insurance company been Humana, they would have just posted a comment on his Facebook page.
Well... (Score:2)
"Mr Quintana died the next day."
Well at least he got that part of it right.
I'm only surprised that the robot didn't hand him a "How To Cope With Your Impending Death" pamphlet.
Alternatives? (Score:2)
So what WOULD have been the proper alternative here?
Disconnect the robot, take an hour to drive over while the patient waited and then tell her she was going to die in person? Somehow that doesn't sound all that good either.
Needs an Uhura (Score:2)
So all that is needed to give the situation some humanity would be to have a nurse stand next to the robot and repeat what it says. It doesn't even need to be a nurse, it could easily be done by a desktop tech from IT who was in the area.
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A Nurse did escort the tele-presence device into the room. The hospital uses the machine for the late shift so they can have a Doctor, they can't afford to have one physically present on site.
Was this interaction perhaps followed by... (Score:2)
... a screen inviting the patient to swipe a credit card?
Can't win this one (Score:2)
Was the specialist local? (Score:2)
I'd be a bit more concerned with the level of care rather than the method of delivering any bad medical news. One of the reasons (in theory) for telepresence is so that you can consult specialists nationally/internationally without them spending hours/days traveling for each patient when they could be lending their expertise to numerous patients in that same time period. I'm not sure if this specific situation fits that scenario, the specialist could live next door to the hospital for all i know, and even
Re:So, maybe not the best bedside manner (Score:5, Funny)
Re: So, maybe not the best bedside manner (Score:2, Insightful)
How terrible for the doctor to do that. Much better to have told him to book an appointment to come in and get tests results thr next day...?
Re: So, maybe not the best bedside manner (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, the doctor *did* speak to the patient in person earlier that day. I presume later when the doctor was at home he got the test results and decided to use the telepresence bot instead to get the news out more quickly rather than waiting a day (and the patient did die the next day).
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> Or the doctor could have driven to the hospital and told them in person.
Or the doctor could simply stop reading email at night and then he wouldn't have known until the next day when the patient died anyways. Then it's god's fault, not his, not the hospitals nor the video robots.
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Re: So, maybe not the best bedside manner (Score:5, Insightful)
So why not just phone call?
This basically was a phone call. Phones are used to deliver bad news all the time. Just because this phone was called a "robot" doesn't make it evil.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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WHY? Don't Millenials live by the video phone? (Score:2)
The grandkids probably didn't have as much trouble with that until they should. Some people these days claim to date by smart phone... only meeting rarely. Dumping by just disconnecting / ignoring sounds like a common thing too.
Communication tech doesn't seem to really be making people more connected on a human level. Technically they can send more data more often but it's hollow... I expect to hear more studies showing negative results as the younger generations continue to live in their bubbles. My gene
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According to a quick google search, the average life expectancy in the US is 78.69 years, and this guy was clearly already in poor health so the news won't have come as a shock to him.
Also just because he was 78 doesn't mean he's unfamiliar with technology, people of his generation started the information age. Donald Knuth is 81 for instance, while Ken Thompson is 76...
Should have texted it. (Score:2)
Or used a phone call?
What's the Emoji for (Score:2)
Your loved one is going to die.
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Your loved one is going to die.
Finger pointing at you - ghost - poop