[DOWNLOAD] "Shades of Gray" by The Hastings Center Report ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Shades of Gray
- Author : The Hastings Center Report
- Release Date : January 01, 2009
- Genre: Life Sciences,Books,Science & Nature,Health, Mind & Body,Health & Fitness,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 47 KB
Description
In just two years, the first of the 78 million baby boomers will turn sixty-five, and the long-anticipated graying of America will begin in earnest. By 2030, the number of Americans over sixty-five will double from the current 35 million to a stunning 71.5 million, or 20 percent of the population. While the proportion of people older than sixty-five is expected to peak in 2030, the so-called oldest old will continue to grow in number: those aged eighty-five and older will climb from the current 5.3 million to 21 million in 2050. It is this group that presents the greatest challenges because over half are significantly limited in their basic functioning (bathing, dressing, or walking, for example), and about one-third have cognitive impairment. Figuring out how best to respond to our oldest citizens is a political, financial, medical, and ethical problem. The ethical issues were first comprehensively laid out by Daniel Callahan in his much-maligned but critically important 1987 book, Setting Limits: Medical Goals in An Aging Society. Callahan begins by asking how we should regard aging and death. Should we accept human finitude and accordingly seek ways of enhancing quality in life's last phase, or should we continually seek to prolong life? Callahan comes down on the side of accepting aging as part of the human condition. His endorsement of age-based restrictions on life-prolonging technology rests on his belief that we have to come to terms with aging.