Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
4
pubmed:dateCreated
2006-5-3
pubmed:abstractText
With increasing frequency, the oldest members of US society are undergoing medical interventions aimed at prolonging life. Using cardiac care as a case study, this paper explores how a discourse of risk infuses and legitimates high-tech clinical treatments in late life. In particular, we examine how the diminishing risks associated with biomedical procedures produce a sense of medical possibility regarding life extension, and push the definition of "old age" into a receding future. Simultaneously, physicians, patients and families come to understand the management and reduction of future cardiac risks to be germane for individuals even near the end of life. Driven by the logic and language of risk, decisions to intervene are experienced as incremental and largely unremarkable, and the pursuit of an open-ended future via biomedical means is perceived as an ethical imperative, trumping deliberation or discussion of the utility of intervention and the ultimate ends being pursued. For practitioners and patients alike, the engagement of risk, the preservation of hope it facilitates and the routinisation of intervention it produces all contribute to the emerging mandate to treat at ever-older ages.
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
May
pubmed:issn
0141-9889
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:volume
28
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
479-502
pubmed:dateRevised
2007-11-15
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2006
pubmed:articleTitle
Risk, life extension and the pursuit of medical possibility.
pubmed:affiliation
Institute for Health and Aging, University of California-San Francisco, 3333 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA. janet.shim@ucsf.edu
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article