Ethical confrontations in the incapacitated aged.
Effective factors that have made it possible for an increasing proportion of the population to reach old age have nevertheless presented society with new problems and ethical dilemmas. Several questions that arise include:1) What are the responsibilities of the medical profession in providing medical care or supervision for patients who manifest irreversible decremental processes associated with old age; C); 2) Under what circumstances is there a moral imperative to preserve life, especially in patients who manifest an irreversible loss of awareness or are sustained by purely mechanical means?; 3) What are the limits of the resources which can be allocated to health care in general, and to the aged in particular, in a society in which resources are no longer infinite and allocations may become necessary; C0 4) what is the profession's responsibility for identifying decremental aging changes and characterizing them, even it this information is personally threatening and socially disturbing to those who would prefer to consider them diseases, and thus reversible by traditional means?; and 5) Is there a moral mandate to identify mechanisms of aging and techniques for slowing the process, in order to prolong life beyond what appears to be the normal biologic limit of three generations?
D000368:Aged; D006233:Persons with Disabilities; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D006299:Health Services for the Aged / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D006801:Humans; D040841:Resource Allocation