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. "This is a timely work covering a broad spectrum of the ethical issues in elder care, from macro-level societal concerns to specific clinical challenges. . .the editors have done an excellent job of providing thought provoking, well written articles addressing a wide array of bioethical issues in the care of the elderly. . .The book excels as it addresses a wide spectrum of ethical issues in a serious manner. It addresses the scope of society's obligation to provide care for the elderly, which is a classic, well-known ethical issue. In addition, it sheds light on lesser known, though critically important ethical issues. The usefulness of this book lies in its breadth. It covers a wide range of topics, yet does so in a careful, focused manner. It is not a comprehensive treatment of the ethical issues surrounding the care of the elderly, nor is it a thorough introduction to such issues, and this is intentional. This book provides a careful analysis of specific issues spanning the range of caring for the elderly."-Doody's Health Sciences Book Review Journal

"...of considerable interest to those wishing to read around the topic of medical and social care of the elderly." - Irish Journal of Medical Science