OLD-AGE, DISEASE, AND THE DISCOURSE ON RISK - GERIATRIC ASSESSMENT INUS HEALTH-CARE

This article explores one way in which medical practice confronts old age, disease, and conceptions of risk through an examination of geriat ric assessment, a recently created health care modality in the United States. The process of geriatric assessment is shown to extend medicin e's gaze to all aspects of bodily, mental, and social existence, there by contributing to widespread cultural confusion about the equation of old age with disease. Geriatric medicine's representation of old age and disease is embedded in a risk discourse permeating contemporary so ciety. An analysis of geriatric assessment conferences suggests that t he old become the field on which the imperative to reduce risk by beha vior modification and supervision competes with the deeply held value of autonomy. Medicine is assumed to be the appropriate institution for managing both the risks associated with aging and disease and the con flict between surveillance and care on the one hand, and freedom and n eglect on the other.