ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of the “biomedical model,” a paradigmatic perspective which focuses on individual organic pathology, physiological etiologies, and biomedical interventions, in aging and the proposition that the “biomedicalization of aging” is a dynamic, complex and multidimensional process. The construction of aging as a medical problem focuses on the diseases of the elderly—their etiology, treatment, management—from the perspective of the practice of medicine as defined by practitioners. The weak status and stature of geriatrics within medicine are reflected in the institutional and professional struggles around whether geriatrics merits the legitimacy of specialty or even subspecialty status. The biomedicalization of aging has affected and been affected by the content of professional training; it has shaped an orientation toward medical education—and within that—an orientation to research which deals in biomedical terms with an aging population. A content analysis of the four major study reports appearing on the topic of educational needs for an aging society in the 1980s is illustrative.
