Peer reviewed
ERIC Number: EJ696307
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2004-Jun-1
Pages: 7
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0016-9013
EISSN: N/A
Anti-Aging Medicine: Can Consumers Be Better Protected?
Mehlman, Maxwell J.; Binstock, Robert H.; Juengst, Eric T.; Ponsaran, Roselle S.; Whitehouse, Peter J.
Gerontologist, v44 n3 p304 Jun 2004
The use of interventions claiming to prevent, retard, or reverse aging is proliferating. Some of these interventions can seriously harm older persons and aging baby boomers who consume them. Others that are merely ineffective may divert patients from participating in beneficial regimens and also cause them economic harm. "Free market regulation" does not seem to weed out risky, ineffective, and fraudulent anti-aging treatments and products. Public health messages, apparently, are having little effect. What more can be done to achieve better protection for older consumers? An analysis of the potential for federal and state action reveals many barriers to effective governmental regulation of anti-aging interventions. In view of dim prospects for stronger public regulation, physicians and other professionals--especially geriatricians and gerontologists--will need to be more aggressive in protecting older consumers. In particular, The Gerontological Society of America and the American Geriatrics Society should undertake a sustained program of specific educational efforts, directed at health professionals and the general public, in which they sort out as best they can the helpful, the harmful, the fraudulent, and the harmless anti-aging practices and products.
Descriptors: Free Enterprise System, State Action, Patients, Physicians, Public Health, Geriatrics, Gerontology, Baby Boomers
Gerontological Society of America, 1030 15th Street, NW, Suite 250, Washington, DC 20005-1503. Web site: http://www.gerontologyjournals.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A