“There are strong arguments that human health and life have fundamental value and that incremental gains in health and in years of life will benefit us.”
I agree! For this to be realized, two things need to happen.
First, let me address one of the arguments against aging research, namely that it is hard to support aging populations. I believe that we are moving toward a world in which everyone will have a basic income that will be able to support everyone. People believe that money is a tangible commodity like coal or lithium, but it ceased to be that years ago. I suspect that AI will be able to use money to augment it and that this will be enough to support us all. We do need good government for that. All the other issues the supposedly superior species called Homo sapiens should be able to tackle as well. Yes, we do need to learn to live differently and become much less consumerist and wasteful.
That concerns the first thing that needs to happen for older adults to be able to live happy healthy lives. It takes money. In Australia, but also in the United States and countries like Germany, older women are increasingly often homeless. It is hard to remain healthy when you’re street-homeless, over 60 and without income and possibly also without access to medical care. I will come back to this.
The other thing that needs to happen is educating people on what it means to grow older to beat gerontophobia. There is an emphasis on ageing being the same as becoming physically and mentally incapacitated. The reality still is that the majority of older adults do not get Alzheimer’s. When I was in my mid-30s and working on a PhD in marine (biogeo)chemistry in Florida, one of my neighbors across the street was 80, had black hair that was not colored, was lively and upbeat and regularly played tennis. I had more grey hairs than she did. She was an example of how I wanted to grow old.
I had always looked forward to growing older. I did some tests when I was in my 40s and was informed that I could expect to live to 89, provided I look well after myself. When I was 50 and looked back at all the things I had done between 20 and 50, it was clear to me that there was still a whole world ahead of me.
I am blessed as dementia does not run in my family. Cancer does – and my mother died of it when I was 14 – but it’s all different cancers so there likely is no hereditary factor involved. This means that I have a lot of control over my own health. Having outlived my mother in a way places a duty on me to live well and enjoy all the years that she didn’t get to experience.
However, that is not how most younger people feel about older adults. I am in my mid-60s now and have been taken aback by how disabling and awful gerontophobia can be. It shocked me, frankly. In some societies, older adults are marginalized and pushed to the fringes of society, no longer fully allowed to participate in life. Just like with physical disabilities, this – along with the view that anyone over 50 would be foolish to try to remain in good health and the health inequity this can result in as well of course overmedication, thankfully both now disappearing – is what often makes older adults “incapacitated” and their lives “not worth living”.
As you may know, one of the political parties in the Netherlands (called D66) has proposed voluntary euthanasia for healthy adults of 75 and older (“completed life”). This bill thankfully did not make it and I believe that there was quite an uproar among the medical community when it was tabled (but I wasn’t in the country at the time). I too am horrified by this idea.
Now, as promised, I will come back to homelessness to explain why I am horrified by the idea of voluntary euthanasia for healthy older adults (besides that it could also open the door for euthanasia for teenagers who wrestle with that stage of life). I am homeless too at the moment. I am currently living under two tarps among the nettles and enjoy the company of voles, mice, rats and many different birds and insects, in an urban environment. The reason that I am homeless has two main causes.
With no income of my own, I bolted from a situation with horrific gerontophobia, but I will spare you details as I don’t want this to turn into a long lament. The second reason is that I was not entitled to financial support in the city that I then went to. It had been my home town for many years before, but I have lived abroad for a long time and no longer was entitled to any support. I had initially been planning for van life, but a few things did not work out the way I anticipated. I then whipped up a fundraiser, which kept me in tourist hostels for a while and enabled me to buy food but it was not enough for a van. Going into why I had no savings is beyond the scope of this response, but I will mention that I went to university a little later in life than is usual.
I am still aiming for van life and know now that I would absolutely love it. I am actually learning a lot from being homeless that will also be useful for van life (about condensation, for example).
I support myself from the proceeds of collecting cans and bottles that I take to supermarkets. I receive 10 to 25 eurocents for them.
Now here’s the thing. I walk many kilometers per day, often carry half of my stuff with me to go to libraries where I charge my electronic equipment and very often make awkward twisting movements, half of the time lifting something heavy, as part of living under two tarps. Last weekend, there was a major event in the city as a result of which there was a lot of collecting to do. This included very heavy bags with glass bottles.
Here is the thing. I happen to have a minor genetic spinal deformity. When you’re living like this, such a spinal deformity can literally become the proverbial final straw. My back is not broken and normally this deformity does not bother me. The older you get, the better you get to know your body and the better you learn to deal with its idiosyncrasies. Living the way I currently do, however, is physically challenging (and I can’t be sure that I get sufficient calcium all the time either). I’m fit enough, but I can’t undo that my spine is a little warped and that discs can move out of place.
This weekend, I was rather desperate because this back problem impacts my nerves too and on Friday, my body made clear that it really has limits as to what it can take. (Details don’t matter here.) When you can’t function physically in circumstances like these, hope goes out of the window because then you can no longer do what you need to do to support yourself. There are many little things too, such as that it is hard to put ibuprofen gel on your back when you’re literally under two tarps, even though the ibuprofen might help with at least the back pain.
The other thing I do to support myself is trade foreign currencies online, with a ridiculously tiny capital. I would be able to do this much better from a van, for starters because it means that I never have to depend on only a phone and would not run out of juice. Now I find myself trudging all over town, schlepping many of my things with me to be able to do that too.
Finally, it would also be wonderful to be able to use a bathroom when I need to, which I would be able to do in a van, and to wash myself when I want to, which I would also be able to do in a van. I wouldn’t constantly be twisting my back (and I’d probably sleep much better as my tarps are next to a very busy train track).
I currently look much older than I am on most days – and that too sometimes trips people up – because homelessness quickly covers you with layers of dead skin cells and I can’t henna and style my hair. But that is just cosmetics and it’s just temporary. In the first 35 years of my life or so, I looked much younger than I was. That too got me discriminated against, but as I wasn’t aware of it, it didn’t bother me at the time. I can only see it now, in retrospect. That’s why I see so clearly that age labels and assumptions based on age or on looks are treacherous.
Haven’t I illustrated rather nicely how important money is to be able to thrive past the age of 75 and how crucial the absence of gerontophobia is? In spite of my current circumstances, I haven’t regretted moving out of what I nicknamed a penal colony where people get punished for being 55 or over. (I know now, in hindsight, not back then, that I’d haved ended up committing suicide if I had stayed.) (Housing situations/shortages can cause a person to make stupid decisions. I made a stupid decision when I moved in; that’s on me. I learned a tough lesson.) In two years’ time, my various pension will start kicking in and I will be able to get a small lump sum payment then. Then I will certainly be able to purchase a vehicle and support myself from that point forward. I still have two years to go so I can’t afford to have my back and legs quit on me just because of the way I am currently living. The only issue is money. It is not my age.
PS
By the way, I take N-acetyl cysteine to help keep inflammation down. It thins the mucus in my lungs as well, which in my case is also very helpful. I know that my circumstances are stressful, for all sorts of reasons, and I am currently not always eating as well as I would like to. I am pretty sure that the NAC helps with the back issue as well. Fortunately, I was recently able to make use of a 2-for-the-price-of-one deal. My NAC had already run out some months ago.
