Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society

In this wise and thought-provoking review of present attitudes and public policy toward aging and death, Callahan, author of Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality, etc., faults our health care system for devoting disproportionate resources and technology on extending the lives of the elderly regardless of the quality of their lives. He also warns against the social and economic consequences of the increased ratio of old people in the population. Medical care, he suggests, should be allocated based on standards of need and priorities to meet them over a ""normal life-span opportunity range,'' limiting the use of new technology to that which improves the quality of life. He also discusses the ethics of withholding artificial sustenance from the terminally ill, euthanasia and assisted suicide. ``The proper question is not whether we are succeeding in giving a longer life to the aged,'' he argues, but ``whether we are making of old age a decent and honorable time of life.'' (September 17)