The Biomedicalization of Aging: Dangers and Dilemmas

Abstract

Medicine, with its focus on individual organic pathology and interventions, has become a powerful and pervasive force in the definition and treatment of aging. The resulting "biomedicalization of aging" socially constructs old age as a process of decremental physical decline and places aging under the domain and control of biomedicine. This paper examines the effects of medicalization on the scientific enterprise and development of the knowledge base in aging, the status and work of the professions, policy, and public perception.

Extending the Critical Gerontology Perspective: Cultural Dimensions. Introduction

“…The constructs bring shared cultural assumptions about the world into the research process and the course of the discipline (Achenbaum, 1978;Cole, 1986;Estes & Binney, 1990;Rubinstein, 1990) as Moss and Moss (1989) document in the case of the disenfranchisement of death and grief from mainstream gerontology. Less explicitly, the constructs carry with them an implicit script or teleology for maintaining society and for individual development that replicates current values or social roles and inter group structures.…”

Journey’s end? From residual service to newer forms of pathology, risk aversion and abandonment in social work with older people

“…Little resistance has emerged regarding these extensive reforms: and no consistent attempt has been made to advocate the distinctly constructive role that social workers might play within ageing communities; especially beyond regulatory and standardised McDonaldised tasks and mundane knowledge bases that privilege competition, markets, superfluous assessments and carefully rationed care packages, alongside a push for autonomy, community based self-governance and biomedical care (Estes and Binney, 1989;Rose, 1993;Deacon, 2000;Webb, 2006;Dustin, 2007). Key social work roles such as advocacy, constructing and fortifying networks of support or navigating users' through complex social care and welfare systems is unlikely to be adequately met by any other professional group.…”

Reframing Person-Centered Nursing Care for Persons With Dementia

“…During this time, funding rapidly increased for the problem of dementia and AD, further fueling biomedical research on dementia (Fox, 1989). Such a success was achieved through the increased NIH funding for the establishment of centers focusing on the medical problems of AD and aging, which redefined a social problem into a medical one behind technical-sounding diagnostic labels (Elliott, 2004;Estes & Binney, 1989). The most widely used diagnostic criteria for AD are the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke-Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association (NINCDS-ADRDA) criteria (McKhann et al, 1984) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV) criteria (American Psychiatric Association, 1994).…”