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The total number of arrests of elderly people exceeded the arrests of teenagers - 880 arrests 
(mostly for shoplifting, against 642 teenager arrests for the same offence).
This report in the Washington Post goes on to say that in a rising trend since 2006, for every two teenagers arrested on the Japanese northern island of Hokkaido, “police collared three people 65 and older” and that this phenomenon has “echoes across Japan, where crimes committed by the elderly are increasing at a far faster pace than the elderly population itself.”
Dear Editorial Team Thanks for the quick return (to my objection to the publishing of the FATE article in the October issue of the Newsletter). My main complaint was an unsigned paper from a lobby group. Whatever Ray (Tallis) and I do, we both stand up to be counted. Looking up FATE on the Internet, it’s a spin off from the Euthanasia society. For me, the faith group stands for a correct compassion which says, I love you for your humanity and we will care for you, because you are you. But the hidden agenda at the moment is demand management - people want to die at home, dying in hospital takes a long time and is costly. Best not to admit them. Better still if they die. Peter (Millard) |
Some years ago, the British Geriatrics Society began its campaign to present a positive image of ageing. This had more to do with changing the association of the word “geriatrics” with wards of frail, bedridden people, waiting to die than it had to do with the slightly more uplifting images of “hip” leather clad, silver haired villains offloading the contents of shop shelves into their swag bags.
I raise this issue, firstly because it has some bearing on a keynote lecture at the Autumn Meeting where Chris Phillipson outlined the sociological trends which re-define ageing in the 21st century (see the Autumn meeting report), but also because during several discussions with colleagues at the recent Autumn meeting, I was told (again) that the name of the “British Geriatrics Society” is a liability to physicians of elderly care.
At the beginning of my term of office, I asked for the readership’s views on changing the name of the Society. I received a total eight letters which, I know you’ll agree, does not constitute a mandate to take the matter further, even though those that did respond in favour of changing the Society’s name, did so with some passion. But it was upon receiving a letter from Roy Latham, one of our lay members on the BGS Policy Committee and aged around 70, saying much the same thing as my colleagues at the Autumn Meeting, that I felt compelled to ask the readership again, although phrased a little differently: What do you call the department in your hospital, where geriatricians administer care to older people? b) what would you call it if it were up to you? Would you settle for “Department of Care for the Elderly”, or would you, like Marion McMurdo, give it a name where the public are less likely to feel they are being consigned to God’s waiting room? (Marion’s department is called “Ageing and Health” and her letter can also be found here.) If a significant number of you have done the same thing as McMurdo et. al, or fantasise about doing so, and I get to hear about it, we then have a mandate to explore (again) the notion of changing the Society’s name.
Talking of dying
Peter Millard, whose stance on assisted dying is well known, contacted the Editorial team (see box above), regarding the FATE article which appeared in the last issue of the newsletter. He objected to the BGS publishing an article from a pro-euthanasia lobby group. The object of publishing the article however, was not so much about promoting FATE’s objectives as to acknowledge the continuing debate on the issue of assisted suicide - a subject which has been receiving a good airing in the media in the past couple of months and which was debated (again) in parliament in November (Martin Curtice). Much as most of us would like the possibility of our role being changed to include murdering our patients to go away, the public will not allow this to happen, and we have to be aware of that and continue to fight our corner.
The things that brighten one’s day
On a brighter note, we have the encouraging news that NICE has issued its first public guidance, aimed at non-medical interventions which enhance quality of life, and the vicarious kudos we can take from the achievement of one of our own. Prof Bhowmick’s ACAT programme has won the 2008 BUPA Care Foundation Award. Delivering care in the community has long been the government’s obsession and Wales seems well advanced in creating the training programmes and the infrastructure to deliver as much care as possible in the homes of our older patients. Congratulations to the Torfaen team.
This being the final issue of 2008, I will wish readers a good festive season and add my hopes to everybody else’s that 2009 sees those green shoots of economic recovery sooner, rather than later.
David Oliver
BGS Newsletter, Dec 2008
Issue 19 ISSN 1748-6343 19