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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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The medicalisation of old age
— should be encouraged | | Author(s) | Shah Ebrahim |
| Journal title | British Medical Journal, vol 324, no 7342, 13 April 2002 |
| Pages | pp 861-863 |
| Keywords | Medical care ; Ageing process. |
| Annotation | The growing population of affluent older people may have greater expectations of medical care. Medicalisation was originally applied to the over-investigation and treatment of women's reproductive health, but now is also being applied to death and old age. While medicalisation of old age can be dangerous when treatments are taken to extremes, the author suggests that it should generally be encouraged, since attempts to ration medical care on the grounds of the "fair innings" argument or by chronological age are flawed. By the same token, treatments to combat the ageing process itself should be subject to the same regulatory framework as any new medical technology. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-020422210 A |
| Classmark | LK: BG * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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