A good friend of mine came down with Parkinson's Disease. The tremors got so bad on one side he elected to have a control-mediating chip implanted in his skull. It did wonders to mitigate the tremors. But it was a battle. It still came at him from the other side, and he had that implant as well. Toward the end, it was still a struggle, because the Parkinson's was interfering with his ability to articulate his speech. He died not long after that, with complications from pneumonia. I think his breathing was affected by the Parkinson's.

I have no patience or sympathy for the point of view that we cannot use technology to alleviate misery. I was on the fast track for dying of congestive heart failure, but an open-heart surgery was able to repair (not replace) my mitral valve to 98% full function. Where was my father and his father when they were my age? In graves. But according to the purists, I am not supposed to have this titanium wire in my heart holding my mitral valve together. Often, with age, people get cataracts and become functionally blind. The old treatment was to remove the cataracted lens and live with powerful spectacles. Now we can replace the cataracted lens with a SYNTHETIC lens and restore good and clear vision. I used to work at a company that made such lenses, and I was responsible for advancing the techniques for optical quality control. So, the purists would say "to hell with these synthetic lenses"? You just wait until impairment finds you and sits on you, and then give lectures about how noble it is to suffer in order to avoid anything "synthetic."