As The World Ages, (Is There A) Reason To Smile

Date: August 15, 2009
Source: The New York Times (www.nytimes.com) & Zoe Williams of the Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk)

Ednote: Following along with the debate on Healthcare Reform comes some startling demographics. We in the sustainability league marvel at how everything seems connected often likened to a spider web of interconnectedness. Petroleum dependency is another example of this. Fuel prices, auto dependency, rising drug and healthcare costs, recycling issues of medical waste, PVC, and endocrine disrupters are all interrelated with petroleum. AND what about the increased interest that retired people have in their own welfare? If you’re not old hopefully you will be. They even Vote.

This week the U.S. Census Bureau announced that, within 10 years and for the first time in history, old people will outnumber young people across the globe. They were careful not to be too judgmental about this — there being so little we can do about it anyway — and concentrated not on consequent problems but on the “challenges to policymakers.” And yet whenever this demographic shift comes up, it is presented in terms of a crisis on one hand and a burden on the other.

Pensions are always in turmoil and dependency ratios, particularly in developed economies, are always dangerously skewed. This paper talked about the bureau having “sounded the alarm,” about the “burden on carriers and social services” and “intense pressures on individuals and families.” But so did all the other papers: these are the terms of any discussion about an aging population — that it represents a calamity. But what if it isn’t calamitous? What if it’s a good thing? ...

The rise in the number of the old (and, according to this report, the “oldest old,” classified as the over-80s) is a massive human success story: life expectancy increases because of better education, greater wealth, lower infant mortality, better healthcare, less disease, the reduction of armed conflict, and the development of technology and its application in pursuit of good. It is, frankly, insane to look at an aging population and not rejoice. Why do we even have a concept of public health, of co-operation, of sharing knowledge, if not to extend life, wherever we find it?

Health Care’s Oil Dependency

Judith D. Schwartz writes in Miller-McCune magazine about the threat American health care faces from oil.

One might not imagine oil and medicine would mix, but U.S. health care relies on cheap crude in multiple ways: from petroleum-derived pharmaceuticals (including such commonly prescribed drugs as aspirin, vitamin capsules, cortisone and many antibiotics, antihistamines, medicated skin creams and psychiatric medications), catheters and syringes to running and transporting high-tech machines and time-is-of-the-essence ambulance runs. This makes for great aseptic single-use equipment and complex, even heroic, surgeries, but it also leaves our medical system highly vulnerable to any disruptions to the oil supply — which experts say will undoubtedly happen, though no one knows exactly when. ...

Such a disruption will affect all aspects of our lives, but health care is one that will get hit first, said Howard Frumkin, director of the National Center for Environmental Health, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He sees the risk as significant enough that in a recent Public Health Reports he and colleagues suggest professionals engage in the kind of preparedness, forecasting and scenario-building that’s applied to bioterrorism threats or potential infectious disease outbreaks.