For the Very Old, a Dose of ‘Slow Medicine’ [View All]

[groovedaddy]

It was two decades ago that a group of culinary mavericks took a giant step backward down the evolutionary trail with the “slow food” movement. Instead of fast food produced by the assembly lines of giant consortiums, they championed products of small-scale agriculture — time-consuming to prepare, beautiful to behold, very good for you.

Now (and, some might add, at last) doctors are following suit, rejecting the assembly line of modern medical care for older, gentler options. The substituted menu is not for all patients — at least not yet. For the very elderly, however, most agree the usual tough love of modern medicine in all its hospital-based, medication-obsessed, high-tech impersonality may hurt more than it helps.

In its place, doctors like Dennis McCullough, a family physician and geriatrician at Dartmouth Medical School, suggest “slow medicine” — as he puts it, “a family-centered, less expensive way.”

This medicine is specifically not intended to save lives or to restore youthful vigor, but to ease the inevitable irreversible decline of the very old.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/health/views/26books.html?th&emc=th