Turkish Journal of
GERIATRICS

Hacettepe Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi Tıp Etiği ve Tıp Tarihi Anabilim Dalı, Ankara
BaÅŸkent Ãœniversitesi Adli Tıp Anabilim Dalı, Ankara Aging is a non-recycling, inevitable and physiologic process, which affects all systems. Since the human life is getting longer and the elderly population increase, one of the physiological periods of human life, elderly is getting more important. In this article aging case will be assessed for individual, community and cultural views while it will be considered for medical ethics as well. When and why a human being is considered as aged? How true is a definition or grouping as ‘ Aged People’? Which may be the possible results of social acceptance of stereotyped agedness image? Will there be a need for another assessment for ‘aged people’ especially when the issue is usage of limited sources and to consider the concept of respect to autonomy? What to do in order to construct the bases of ethical behaviors against agedness is to construct a social ethical basis and associated ethical norms which is obliging and encouraging for all people no matter young or aged. Everyone begin his or her way as a child who is dependent to help, then struggles with natural works of life and at the end becomes dependent to help again. It’s said as the golden rule of gerontology that; Behave aged people dependent to help as how you wish to be behaved by adults when you were a child or a teenager. The same rule should be considered for the relations between health professionals and patients, too. Keywords : Aging, medical ethics, autonomy, social ethics