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A comment on The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 years. Parent comment

Re:The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 years by praisewhitey on Saturday September 30, 2023 @06:58PM (#37720767)
Some more information from the reporting at the time

>He had never learned Russian, and has lived the last 20 years in linguistic isolation after the last other Hungarian patients left the hospital in 1980.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/860033.stm

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Re:The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 years by phkahler on Saturday September 30, 2023 @07:07PM (#37720828)
How TF does any institution anywhere keep someone that long and NOT figure out what language they speak and establish communication.

OTOH they didn't find him economically unviable and offer suicide like Canada apparently does...

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Re:The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 years by smsm42 on Saturday September 30, 2023 @07:34PM (#37721008)
They don't care. The function of those institutions isn't to heal people, it's to warehouse them where they won't cause trouble, or sometimes punish those who did cause trouble. It's not that expensive if you pay pennies (or kopecks) to the medical personnel, use the cheapest food that could be found and basically run it as a prison, but with pills and syringes.
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Re:The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 years by elmomle on Saturday September 30, 2023 @07:34PM (#37721010)
Could you offer a citation for that last part?
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Re:The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 years by chownie on Saturday September 30, 2023 @08:03PM (#37721179)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada#Controver...

(Filter to sources if that's your inclination)

iirc it's a reference to a receptionist at the veteran's affairs in Canada, it was claimed they offered an assisted suicide kit to a veteran who requested a stair lift -- the VA later investigated and found no record of the offer. Either that or another (never verified, only alleged) case of this same scenario but with a veteran who asked for help with PTSD.

These two anecdotes come up somewhat often on HN, usually vaguely alluded to rather than explicitly called out.

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Re:The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 years by chupasaurus on Saturday September 30, 2023 @07:31PM (#37720988)
Healthcare system in USSR was `something`, as you can tell.
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Re:The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 years by jsocuwl on Saturday September 30, 2023 @07:50PM (#37721102)
Ah fuck off, why are you picking on Canada suddenly. It has no relevancy whatsoever to that story.
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Re:The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 years by ehPReth on Saturday September 30, 2023 @08:05PM (#37721190)
>economically unviable and offer suicide like Canada apparently does...

Hi, Canadian here.

Having asked... 4? different professionals multiple times for MAID and being denied each time it isn't that easy to get if 'you're just mentally ill'. I wish it was, but that's another debate. Sorry to burst your bubble.

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Re:The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 years by dang on Saturday September 30, 2023 @09:08PM (#37721549)
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37720767.

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