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No Easy Answers: Ethical Dilemmas and Care for the Aged
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13866 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1988 |
5,957 Words |
| Author
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Harry R. Moody
Harry R. Moody is deputy director for the Brookdale Center on
Aging at Hunter College. He is the author of Abundance of
Life: Human Development Policies for an Aging Society
(Columbia University Press, 1988). |
Are there any educated people not familiar with the Greek myth of Oedipus, made world-famous in the plays of Sophocles and the theories of Freud? But there are few indeed who know the myth of Tithonus, the Greek hero who craved immortality. Tithonus was granted his wish by the gods but then discovered that he had failed also to ask the gods for immortal youth. Thus Tithonus achieved his long life, only to survive in the miserable frailty and weakness of advanced age until finally the gods took pity on him and converted him into a grasshopper. The story of Tithonus has a resemblance to the Sorcerer's Apprentice, another cautionary tale about the perils of getting what one wishes for. In fact, both tales today are being played out in the field of medical technology: More and more people are living to advanced old age. But the results, in too many cases, are not exactly what we had hoped for.
No one can work for long in the fields of geriatrics (medical care of the aged) or gerontology (the study of the aging process) without occasionally harboring dark and dismal thoughts that are conveyed by the myth of Tithonus. A walk through a nursing home or a brief trip to the tinsel town of Miami Beach brings the unwelcomed thoughts: is this what we really wanted? Is this what medical science hath wrought? But ambivalent feelings about longevity are easily set aside. "This is no country for old men," wrote the poet W.B. Yeats, and modern America has cheerfully heeded his advice. We quickly put aside any ambivalence about old age and move on to brighter topics.
And yet, the professionals in health care cannot move on. Indeed, as children of aging parents, as citizens and taxpayers, all of us are in the same boat with the
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