Italian
One can’t help but think this way, with bitter irony, as the issue of the elderly emerges in all its gravity in our Western world today. Science works miracles, life expectancy is rapidly increasing, while birth rates are plummeting. But this triumph of science has turned into a social short circuit.
Today, adults find themselves caught in a vice: they must take care of their elderly, often neglecting work and their own family. They live in a state of daily and perpetual stress to care for their natural deficits, their disabilities, and their recurring and chronic illnesses.
Let’s talk about a generation of “children” alert day and night, without breaks, without vacations, without a single day of rest. Medicine keeps the bodies of the elderly alive, but the young become ill from exhaustion while caring for them.
It is a welfare and wallet issue. Those who can afford paid caregivers and home healthcare workers have to spend astronomical sums, often draining a lifetime of savings. And the alternatives? There simply are none.
Nursing homes are full, waiting lists are endless, and turnover is dramatically slow — always, paradoxically speaking, “because of” the successes of medicine.
Some evoke robotics and artificial intelligence as technological saviors, but we are talking about a future still far away. And when that future arrives, it will not be for everyone: machines also have production, maintenance, and repair costs that will weigh on individuals’ pockets.
Medicine has extended life, it’s true, but politics and society have forgotten to make it sustainable. If longevity becomes a luxury for a few and a biological and economic burden for children, then we are not witnessing progress, but a slow and silent collective degradation.
