Care of the Aged

The growing population of elderly and infirm has given rise to serious questions about their proper care and treatment. What responsibility does society have to its aging citizens? What duties if any do grown children owe their parents? What should be done with severely demented patients? When is a person "elderly?" In Care of the Aged, an interdisciplinary panel of diverse thinkers and practicing ethicists grapples with these and other pressing moral problems associated with the treatment and care of the elderly-and offers proposals for solving them. Writing in an easily understandable style, the authors debate the propriety of Western society's current mechanisms for dealing with elderly citizens and consider the problems that arise for medical personnel and family members who provide such care. Among the issues discussed are disrespecting our elders, ethical dilemmas in community-based care, duties to aging parents, a feminist ethics of care, and the ethics of pain management in older Americans.§Informative and readily accessible, Care of the Aged not only illuminates for the educated reader many of the key ethical issues arising in the care and treatment of the elderly, but also offers recommendations with real moral import.