Word: gerontologists
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...many ways, America is not yet ready for a vast social change that came upon it rather suddenly. "It used to be," says Ken Dychtwald, a young, blunt-spoken gerontologist in Emeryville, Calif., "that people didn't age. They died." When the Republic was founded, a newborn child could expect to reach 35. Today Americans could well live into their 90s -- and live well too. In 1950 people 65 and over made up just 7.7% of the population. Now the number is up to 12%, and it will reach 17.3% by 2020. Fastest growing of all is the group...
...many of the relentlessly young, the attitude is born out of a community + life that resembles nothing so much as their college years of half a century ago: a life of options, dates, lessons and sudden, surprising fellowship. Florida Gerontologist Otto Von Mering, 65, refers to the "fictive kinship," whereby older people acquire a new support system long after their families and friends have dispersed. Take Liz Carpenter. At 65, the twangy-voiced former press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson started writing a book. At 66, she found romance -- with a man she had known when...
...time, through sheer force of gravity, the products themselves, and not just the ads, will be shaped for an older consumer. "We have designed America to fit the size, shape and style of a country we used to be," says Gerontologist Dychtwald, "and what we used to be is young." Books and newspapers, with their tiny print, are designed for wide young eyes, as is the lighting in public places. Buttons, jars and doorknobs are obstacles to those with arthritis. Traffic lights are timed for a youthful pace. "In years to come," predicts Dychtwald, "huge industries will emerge as America...
...twice as many women as men are affected, according to preliminary findings of a Harvard Medical School study. (No similar study exists on loss of bowel control, though estimates suggest the figure is far lower.) Nursing homes spend $8 billion a year to cope with the bladder problem, reports Gerontologist Neil Resnick of Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, "more than is spent on the general population for dialysis and coronary-bypass surgery combined." Many younger people are victims, including children with persistent bed-wetting trouble. Incontinence, which can range from slight leakage to total absence of control, can be caused...
...charged with murder for complying with a family's request to remove feeding tubes from a hopelessly brain-damaged patient. The charge was dismissed upon appeal last fall. But, together with similar cases around the country, it has "sent a chill into the medical community," according to Washington Gerontologist Joanne Lynn, principal author of a 1983 Presidential Commission report on medical ethics...