Ethics and the Elderly

One of the fruits of the techno-culture we live in is depriving the coming generations of an understanding and appreciation of the beauty and dignity of old age. The capitalist-empiricist paradigm and worldview considers a person, above the so-called “productive age”, a liability. The self-centredness of modern man, despite all his claims of serving humanity, makes a person insensitive toward his or her own grandparent’s care. Even state mechanisms at the global level, though responsive in some cases to the expected health issues of those who reach old age, look at issues from an administrative and functional perspective. Sarah M. Moses has brought to light a well-researched work to let the policy planners understand the magnitude of the issue. Though written predominately from a Christian perspective, the available data provided by her offers food for thought for social workers as well as policy planners. The President of Council on Bio-ethics, in a 2005 report on caregiving in the U.S states: ‘in the years ahead, the age structure of most advanced industrial societies will be unlike anything seen in human society, with both the average age of the population and the absolute number of old people increasing dramatically’ (p. 14)...