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Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society, with "A Response to My Critics"
A provocative call to rethink America's values in health care.
- GenresNonfictionScience
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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August 10, 2026
An important and thoughtful book in which Daniel Callahan, a philosopher and leading medical ethicist, explores how to respond to medicine's attempt to "abolish old age" with all the suffering and economic cost that results. He advocates stopping life-extending treatment at age 75 as well as enhancing the value of old age and concentrating more on the issues--like incontinence and deafness--that reduce the quality of life in old age.
His argument advanced in 1995 was unpopular then and would probably be even more unpopular now.
Famously Callahan had $80 000 worth of treatment when in his 80s, which many saw as completely undermining his argument. I don't see that and have explored his argument in a blog:
https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/...
His argument advanced in 1995 was unpopular then and would probably be even more unpopular now.
Famously Callahan had $80 000 worth of treatment when in his 80s, which many saw as completely undermining his argument. I don't see that and have explored his argument in a blog:
https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/...
Displaying 1 of 1 review