Planning Later Life ─ Bioethics and Public Health in Ageing Societies

This book examines the relevance of modern medicine and healthcare in shaping the lives of elderly persons and aging societies. Combining individual and social dimensions, Planning Later Life discusses the ethical, social, and political consequences of increasing life expectancies and demographic change in the context of biomedicine and public health.

By focusing on the field of biomedicine and healthcare, the authors engage readers in a dialogue on the ethical and social implications of recent trends in dementia research and care, advance healthcare planning, or the rise of anti-aging medicine and prevention. Bringing together the largely separated debates of individualist bioethics on the one hand, and public health ethics on the other, the volume deliberately considers the entanglements of envisioning, evaluating and controlling individual and societal futures. The process of devising and exploring the various positive and negative visions and strategies related to later life is rarely reflected systematically from a philosophical, sociological, and ethical point of view.

As such, this book will be of crucial reading to those working and studying in the life sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences, particularly in the areas of bioethics, social work, gerontology and aging studies, health and social care, sociology, social policy, and geography and population studies.

Mark Schweda is Research Fellow at the Department for Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, University Medical Center Gottingen.

Larissa Pfaller is Research Associate at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and currently Deputy Professor at the University of Hamburg.

Kai Brauer is a sociologist and teaches at Carinthia University of Applied Sciences (CUAS) empirical methods and sociology of aging.

Frank Adloff is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hamburg.

Silke Schicktanz is a bioethicist and Professor for Cultural and Ethical Studies of Biomedicine at the Department for Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, University Medical Center Gottingen.