Age Discrimination is a Cancer in Health Care Industry

In addition to SiCKO, another Necessary Link to be aware of:<blockquote>The way I see it, longevity medicine is a means to acknowledge that when you get older, your care needs are different – and I also firmly believe that medicine is as obligated to find ways to help older people survive as it is to find ways to help younger people survive. Anything less than that is age discrimination. It has always confused the heck out of me that if you go into a doctor’s office at age 20 and are told that you’re dying, it’s treated as a tragedy, but if you’re 75, it’s treated like something that you just need to accept. A lot of the medical discrimination experienced by elderly people seems exactly like some of the discrimination experienced by people with disabilities – in both cases you’ll hear things like, “It’s not natural for these people to be alive”.

Before pediatricians existed, children were just treated as if they were smaller versions of adults – now much more is known about anatomy and development, so children receive better treatment. I look forward to the day when elderly people receive similarly better treatment, which of course means the idea of them dying when they don’t want to die can no longer be considered okay.</blockquote>