Mal Fletcher comments

Mal Fletcher

The laying to rest yesterday of Harry Patch, Britain's oldest man and the last surviving member of its World War I armed services, ought to remind us again about the importance of honouring the elderly - and, perhaps, respecting old age itself.

Robert Browning said that the last of life is the best of life. Many people would disagree. When most of us look at the loneliness and the physical if not psychological diminishment that comes with old age, we'd give almost anything to avoid it.

Many of us think like John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, who prayed: 'Lord, don't let me live to be useless.'

Life expectancies have grown dramatically in much of the developed world over the past fifty or so years, yet we still seem largely unable or unwilling to confront the challenge of growing old.

In fact, while some cultures honour the aged, postmodern Western culture seems to have taken on a pre-disposition against them, an attitude that is fed by consumerist marketing and a culture of celebrity that worships youthfulness.

Many older people now claim that this general inclination has morphed into an active discrimination, or ageism.

Strictly speaking, ageism can be directed at the very young as much as the very old. Most often, though, it's a prejudice directed almost entirely at the elderly. It is based on a mainly unspoken belief that they offer little of worth to society, either economically or socially.

Most of us might not consider ourselves ageist, but we may be more prejudiced than we care to admit. In one recent study of human memory, psychologists found that people recalled more negative traits about someone who was labelled 'old' and more positive traits about a someone who was labelled 'young'.

In line with this thinking, we've developed an entire anti-ageing industry, with a plethora of techniques and technologies that promise to beat back the ravages of time.

I've just returned from a brief visit to California, the Mecca for cosmetic-surgery-on-demand. In the home of the facelift, the most common procedures are nose reshaping, liposuction, breast augmentation and eyelid surgery and a third of all patients have more than one procedure at a time.

For those who prefer not to go 'under the knife', there is the Botox injection and the chemical peel.

The health industry offers anti-ageing systems based on bottled vitamins, anti-oxidants, hormones and other health supplements. Meanwhile, ancient anti-ageing techniques, which mix religious teaching with health regimes, have been repackaged for today's market.

Of course, many believe that the answer to ageing, if there is one, will only emerge through the study of genetics -- especially adult stem cell research - or perhaps cryonics. The latter seeks to find a way of freezing human bodies, at the point where medicine can no longer sustain them, so that they might be resuscitated later when science has a few more answers.

At the moment, the process isn't reversible and many scientists doubt that cryonics will ever work. (And many question whether the 'mind' or the 'soul' could be revived along with the physical brain.) But some remain hopeful that things like nanomedicine will one day make it feasible.