Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) arrives to the U.S. Capitol Building on May 10, 2023 in Washington, DC. Feinstein is returning to Washington after over two months away following a hospitalization due to shingles.
In politics, as in life, it’s all too easy to write off old people, especially when they are frail or disabled. President Joe Biden’s fall on stage during the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony on Thursday immediately raised questions of fitness. Even I, a geriatrician and anti-ageism advocate, looked at Dianne Feinstein’s recent return to the Senate after a prolonged absence due to shingles without fully seeing her. The voter in me felt appalled by her condition; the doctor in me wanted to get her home and comfortable.
These are normal, natural and necessary reactions. They also risk forfeiting opportunities to improve work in later life for the good of all Americans.
On the national political stage, age has increasing relevance. The 2024 presidential election currently has 76- and 80-year-old front-runners. In Congress, people are questioning the tenure of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. R-Ky., given his recent long absence after a geriatric fall. And we marvel at Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, an octogenarian so fit that reporters decades younger have trouble keeping up with her as she races along in heels.
Of course, age matters. With each decade, our chances of illness, new disability and death increase.
On the other hand, if we set work limits based on age alone, we risk premature loss of talent and opportunities — for individuals and society. We also exacerbate what has become a defining dilemma of our time: simultaneously demanding older workers retire and lamenting the economic burden imposed on society by unemployed elders.
One solution is to develop evidence-based guidelines that can be used to create employment standards across industries. That approach would use data and expertise from leaders in economics, geriatric medicine, gerontology and elsewhere to optimize work in older ages despite the considerable diversity in health and function across the decades of elderhood.
There are two key issues that need to be addressed to make this happen. The first is deciding when age matters. Despite more than a century of increased longevity, we don’t know how to invoke age most equitably and effectively — at either end of the spectrum. Human beings are maturing later and later and are living longer and longer. This raises questions such as, at what age is a person too young or old to buy a firearm, drink alcohol, go to war, drive a car or hold political office. How we handle these issues affects us all.
The second issue we must determine before creating guidelines on age and employability is deciding who gets to participate in that process. I have spent decades thinking about old age, yet over Memorial Day weekend my 89-year-old mother offered an insight that I missed about Feinstein, that the senator was most likely sacrificing her dwindling well-being to fulfill her duties to office, party and country. That gave me pause: If Feinstein were 52 with terminal cancer, instead of old and frail, might I have seen her actions as heroic instead of incomprehensible?
When developing guidelines — or deciding whom to vote for — we need to consider more than a person’s age.
We are the generations that get to reap the benefits of the human race’s new longevity. With that privilege comes a responsibility to evolve our ideas about aging and adapt societal norms, structures and policies to optimize work and well-being across the lifespan. In the meantime, it’s worth remembering one of our favorite sayings in the geriatrics community: When you’ve seen one 80-year-old, you’ve seen one 80-year-old.
Louise Aronson is a geriatrician and professor of medicine at UC San Francisco. She is the author of “Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life.” ©2023 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
Originally published at Louise Aronson