Why more and more medical students are choosing lifestyle specialties

I'm not going to lie. I used to be in the crowd calling medical students who chose specialties such as dermatology, radiology, Ophthamology, etc, lazy, and maybe even sell-outs depending on the day. But as I think harder about the issue of career choice, how could I or anyone call anyone who chose to go to medical school lazy?

I don't think the increase in popularity of lifestyle specialties is due to the inherent laziness of the individual, but because the opportunity costs of going into medicine are rising every decade. While the study of medicine may not have become harder, I do believe social and economic changes have made it a harder career choice to stick to. In earlier decades when the physician was highly respected and highly paid, and there wasn't much competition amongst other professions for such stature, the sacrifice of becoming a physician probably seemed a lot more worth it.

Now, students have an abundance of career choices upon graduation, careers that could equally lead to high societal stature and high salary. Not only that, these alternative career choices may offer shorter, less turbulent roads to the same destination. So to choose to take the harder course, one is already making a big sacrifice - which, I should mention started since high school. So after 10 years of making hard choices and enduring emotional, physical and intellectual pain to achieve a medical degree, how much more sacrifice of your life can you really make?

I guess the answer to that questions depends on what motivated you to enter medicine in the first place - more altruistic or more selfish; and if you entered for more altruistic reasons (I don't think any decision is 100% altruistic), then have your reasons stuck with you, or has the process morphed them along the way? Afterall, we're all (even doctors), only human.