I won't judge you for your judgement, and I might even share it for people mountaineers who have kids, etc, but I can not agree with your premise that risking death is automatically bad because of how others might feel about it. There's more to life than staying alive.

But what is the gain here of climbing Everest after it has been climbed hundreds of times? Astronauts clearly benefit humanity with more than just great stories. I can't see much marginal benefit for society for each additional Everest climber.

I'm not saying it's wrong or selfish to continue to climb Everest. For the climber him/herself I imagine the benefits are enormous and perhaps worth the risk of life. But I just can't see much benefit for anyone else.

I and my oldest son both have a form of cystic fibrosis. I have figured out how to get us well (we actually work together on it but I do most of the research). Reading up on altitude sickness was an Aha! moment for me. In some ways, medical science doesn't have much of value to offer me in terms of thinking through the problem and coming up with new solutions. Medical science is mostly about finding better drugs rather than a better understanding of the process involved in what is typically a slow torturous death where your lungs deteriorate until you qualify for a lung transplant (assuming you don't have bad habits that disqualify you).

Reading this piece was personally meaningful to me in surprising ways that I probably can't adequately express. I belong to entire communities operating in their own medical equivalent of "The Dead Zone", where lack of oxygen, high doses of medication and so on create very emotional, inflammatory discussions and many people seem incapable of thinking logically. I wrestle continuously with both how and whether to offer assistance in the face of enormous hostility and long odds that it will really do any good. Even people who are interested in what I am doing sometimes write me and bluntly state up front "I will never make the extreme lifestyle changes you have made. But can you tell me more about ... (some food or supplement)?"

Stories about mountain climbing, altitude sickness et al are the absolute best analogies I have tripped across for what I am dealing with. I don't care if mountain climbers are crazy or selfish or whatever. I am grateful for the information they provide. I have a medical condition that forces most people with it to basically gradually suffocate. So I find value in the stories and experiences of mountain climbers. Also, living at 3000 feet above sea level for about 2.5 years, thereby forcibly expanding my lung capacity, probably helped save my life when I spent a year at death's door and was bedridden for 3.5 months and finally got a diagnosis after a lifetime of being treated like a hypochondriac.

Some people are facing things like this totally involuntarily and their situations are difficult to talk about in normal company because it is viewed pathetically rather than like a heroic struggle. I don't need any pity-parties. I am perfectly capable of wallowing in self-pity without any assistance. I need some kind of healthier, more useful feedback. Pieces like this one may be the best I can get given the kind of social responses my story tends to inspire.

Fascinating. It is certainly no regular doctor would prescribe to anyone. But it makes sense.

My grandfather was wounded during the war and as a result was left with a severely reduced lung capacity. When he came back, everyone was surprised when he started singing in a local church choir. Here is a man that can barely breathe and now he wants to sing. Everyone in the village thought he was crazy. But I think the singing was helping him breathe a great deal. He lived 50 more years.

So sometimes the counter-intuitive thing makes sense.

I am often frustrated when I talk to doctors because I want to know in more details what is going on, I want the results of tests explained and so on, Then I am not sure if they are just busy and think I am an asshole for asking annoying questions, or what I am more scared of, they don't actually know or care to know these things and just prescribe pills according to a textbook checklist of symptoms.

Someone who helped me enormously for a time was a former RN who later studied a lot of alternative medicine approaches. I took guaifenisen (sp?) for a time and was trying to figure out what it was doing that it helped. After an internet search failed to answer my questions, I asked her what it did in the body or if she could come up with some information online that might help me understand (she had a track record of coming up with stuff like that). She basically told me "I don't think anyone really knows that. That isn't how drug studies work. You are asking questions that the medical establishment cannot answer." So I suspect that in many cases your bigger fear is exactly what is going on.

I still don't know what gauifenisen really does to the body. It ended up being the last remaining drug I took for a time. I got off it some time in the summer of 2009 and have been drug free ever since.

This might help you to maintain that extra lung capacity or even to build it out further.

I've had a collapsed lung about two years ago and it was my years and years of sax playing that probably saved the day (that and a helpful neighbor that figured out that something serious over and beyond serious chest pain when inhaling was amiss, I'm off the 'if it came by itself it will go by itself' persuasion, which is ok most of the times but not always).

If the mountain climber's goal is to be a stronger person, both he and the people around him benefit from his achieving it. If he comes out of the experience a strong, unintimidatable leader who inspires others and fights hard to make the world a better place, it's even arguable that the people around him benefit from his experience more than he does.

um... what?

If you enjoy doing something, do it. Don't do it so you can add it to your list of life experiences so you can pretend that you've lived a better life than somebody who hasn't done it.

Note, I'm not talking about everyone that does it, just most people.

"Note, I'm not talking about everyone that does it, just most people."

You say that like being selfish is automatically and unquestionably a bad thing.

Playing an X-box is a mildly selfish act. It's fun, but probably isn't a real big win for family, friends, society, etc. Not too damaging to them, though, unless done in excess.

Getting massively drunk and then driving your sports car around risks bystanders (sherpas), your life (causing sorrow and hardship for friends and family), and society (cleaning you and your victims off of the road cost money and time).

I was going to create a startup, but unfortunately I think it's just too selfish of an act. What if by giving up my cubicle I screw over my family and pets that depend on me? Can I be so selfish as to give up my livelihood, my life savings and dedicating every waking moment to making my startup succeed?

I would argue that creating a startup--much like climbing Everest--is a risky endeavor with unspeakable rewards. I am not a mountaineer, and I would never risk my life on a mountain just for the pride.

But you have to wonder, as we sit here talking about it on the Internet, do these people know how to really live in a way we haven't experienced? Maybe it's the physical exertion or the satisfaction of accomplishing one's dreams, but you can't chalk up every hardcore mountaineer (or any other deadly hobby, for that matter) as mere adrenaline junkies. The real debate here is whether or not it's worth it to risk your life in order to live it to the fullest.

Good one.

My point, however, was that I do not presume to judge others based on the risks that they take in their own lives. The juxtaposition I was trying to make is that people comfortable in their corporate lives might say it's selfish or crazy to persue one's dreams of creating a startup at significant financial risk, just like some people here are saying it's selfish or crazy to want to climb Everest.

Is skydiving a suicidal activity? Are surfers that risk shark attacks or storm chasers that follow tornadoes nothing more than stupid, selfish, suicidal sacks of meat? I personally don't think so, but you are of course entitled to an opinion all of your own.

By the way, I'm more than happy to converse different opinions in a civilized manner; bleeding sarcasm isn't necessary to get your point across.

Now, we're talking life instead of life savings, but I find it hard to say that their decision is wrong in any ethical or moral sense, and I'm curious what moral framework would justify your viewpoint. Additionally, burning through your life savings (and that of friends/family) can easily cause more long-term harm than having a mom or dad that died while climbing Everest. You just think that one risk is acceptable because it doesn't terminate in death. But there are greater things to fear than dying.

Additionally, suppose there were some not-to-distant dystopia in which reading non-approved books were a capital offense, and the state/corporate/whatever apparatus caught 10% of all offenders and had a 100% conviction rate for that 10%. Would that suddenly make reading wrong? I think most people have the intuition that the law is wrong, not the reading.

Similarly, I have a hard time seeing why 10% of people dying while doing something somehow makes it wrong per se.

What about the folks who lose their life savings when their businesses fail, and decide to commit suicide? I have no stats on how often that actually happens, but it's something to consider.

Dying in a mountain may be part of the process of living your life and it's not less stupid than dying in a car accident, however climbing a mountain and have 10% chance of dying in the process is just plain reckless and selfish.

Your life is your own, but don't expect to get approval and admiration from everybody else.

But it also doesn't count the many people who start climbing the mountain but turn around before the summit and make it down alive.

The true statistic is likely much less than 10%.

However, only about 2700 individuals climbed -- which puts the deaths / "uniques" back up to 8%. And if you assume that the sherpas die less frequently than do the tourists, 10% doesn't seem too far off.

Interestingly, K2 seems to be much more difficult with a much higher fatality rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-thousander

The attempt numbers you quote, 4102 attempts by 2700 individuals, was for 2008. A year with one fatality.

Those odds are quite different.

However, the rate stands. It's not correct, according to the source on 8000ers, that 4000 people climb it in a year. Indeed, the list shows that number is for all time as well.

(Perhaps 99.9999% if you include the Dalai Lama)

[1]: http://www.prb.org/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedo...

10% of people who attempt a summit die, but that does not mean that attempting a summit necessarily has a 10% chance of death. That 10% figure is not conditioned on your individual preparation, your guides, and your fellow climbers. I would guess that with the right preparation, the chance of death is much less than 10%.

He's able to be so successful because he makes sure his climbers are adequately prepared, and he doesn't allow people to climb who he doesn't think are fit enough. It seems like (at least from the Discovery series) that many of the people who die are hiking on their own, without the help of one of the successful companies, so when something goes wrong, they don't have a support network to help them.

I honestly don't know, but I would guess that people attempting to climb Everest are not just random climbers, but people who train specifically for this.

Last year there were 330 summits and 5 deaths, so roughly 1.5%

Thanks for the link O.P, it really made an impact on certain priorities and perspective.

The other half is that in most of America and many parts of the rest of the world, most people can't support themselves financially or otherwise without driving a car at least 5 days per week. The same is not true of climbing Mt. Everest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate

Automobile travel is one of the most likely voluntary activities to kill you, and the most likely direct cause of death (as opposed to things like smoking which kill you indirectly over time).