Tom took off his fogged spectacles and wiped them. I pushed the advantage. "Cruelty among doctors. An interesting little sidetrack. I recall, for example--" "Skip it." He looked sorrowfully at me. "You win that one." "All I want," I said, "is for people to _be_ truly humane. _Truly_ loving. But, to gain that, we'd be obliged to give up a great deal we now cherish dearly." We had lemon ice. Later, we walked into the Park and sat down.... The people on the newspapers on the grass, the silo smell of trees at night in heat waves, lamplight and music--as I have said.... "Cruelty in doctors," Tom repeated musingly, after we found a bench on the Mall, where we could feel the breeze if one came. "Last night," I responded, when he didn't go on, "I was reading a book that suggested the whole philosophy of medicine was cruel. Saving babies--increasing the life span--only so people will go hungry by millions." "Vogt? Osborne? I read them. What's true humanity? I don't know--except sometimes, in individual cases. What about old people, for instance?" "What about them?" He looked back over his shoulder as if he could see through the night, the trees of Central Park, and the blocks of buildings, to the East River. "Out on the Island--I take care of a ward filled with them. Chronics. Sixty years old. Seventy. Eighty. Ninety. Some been in bed for twenty years. No cure. No hope. No chance--in a high percentage--of doing a thing, ever. An organ's shot--ruined beyond repair. Half of them touched with senile dementia; a quarter, sunk in it. Mess their beds. You feed 'em with spoons. And yet they go on--year after year after year." "I've seen the ward." "America has millions of such people. Only a fraction of 'em in hospitals. Moms and pops, grandmas and grandpas, hanging on to the last, sick gristle of existence. Spoiling the lives of other millions of people. Taking their time and their energy. Absorbing funds that young kids desperately need. All for nothing. Wheedling and whining and complaining if everything isn't soft and easy for them. Reminding sons and daughters and grandchildren of their 'duty.' The duty to be enslaved by meaningless, useless senility. The food and the clothes, the beds and the service, the tax money, the energy, the topsoil, if you go for Vogt--and the metal--pours down their gullets and is worn out by their worn-out bodies--and not one single, solitary useful thing is accomplished." "You're stealing my act," I said. Tom laughed ruefully. "It's an easy act for a doctor to crib! Tell me, why in hell do people look forward so much to old age? Nine times out of ten, it's a mess. Even proud, independent people, when they get old, usually lose their pride and their independence--and go down begging for handouts." "The best reason I can think of," I said, "is that they're disappointed in life as they've lived it up to middle age."