Ageing: The new ethical frontier

The ethics of health care has been dominated by a “crisis” approach—when new issues, such as the refusal of life-sustaining treatments or assisted reproduction, etc., arise we apply tested precepts to new situations. If traditional ethics fail, new ethical thinking is developed. Ageing demands an altered paradigm—a fundamental change of thinking. Ethics related to ageing now represents an intersection of health and welfare. Ethically, the former is considered primarily the provenance of professional ethics and personal choice; the latter of social structures and obligation. Ageing then represents a new ethical frontier in terms of definition, framing health and social policy and the ethics that underpins these considerations.