HEALTH CARE AND AGEING AS SOCIAL ISSUE

People worldwide are living longer. Today most people can expect to live into their
sixties and beyond. Every country in the world is experiencing growth in both the size and
the proportion of older persons in the population.

By 2030, 1 in 6 people in the world will be aged 60 years or over. At this time the
share of the population aged 60 years and over will increase from 1 billion in 2020 to 1.4
billion. By 2050, the world’s population of people aged 60 years and older will double (2.1
billion). The number of persons aged 80 years or older is expected to triple between 2020 and
2050 to reach 426 million.

At the biological level, ageing results from the impact of the accumulation of a wide
variety of molecular and cellular damage over time. This leads to a gradual decrease in
physical and mental capacity, a growing risk of disease and ultimately death. These changes
are neither linear nor consistent, and they are only loosely associated with a person’s age in
years. The diversity seen in older age is not random. Beyond biological changes, ageing is
often associated with other life transitions such as retirement, relocation to more appropriate
housing and the death of friends and partners.

Common conditions in older age include hearing loss, cataracts and refractive errors,
back and neck pain and osteoarthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes,
depression and dementia. As people age, they are more likely to experience several
conditions at the same time.

Older age is also characterized by the emergence of several complex health states
commonly called geriatric syndromes. They are often the consequence of multiple underlying
factors and include frailty, urinary incontinence, falls, delirium and pressure ulcers.

A longer life brings with it opportunities, not only for older people and their families,
but also for societies as a whole. Additional years provide the chance to pursue new activities
such as further education, a new career or a long-neglected passion. Older people also
contribute in many ways to their families and communities. Yet the extent of these
opportunities and contributions depends heavily on one factor: health.
 ABORTION AS MORAL ISSUE

Access to abortion is fundamental to the health of individuals, families, and

communities and is a public health issue. Worldwide, over 7 million women are admitted to
hospitals every year due to complications that arise from having unsafe and illegal abortions
and up to 31,000 women die. In the United States, abortion is common and extremely safe.
Despite its demonstrated safety record, abortion has been extensively regulated and restricted,
making access to care increasingly difficult for many Americans.

Barriers To Abortion In June 2022, in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health

Organization case, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned 49 years of precedent
established by the Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey decisions. For the first time
in its history, the Supreme Court has taken away a fundamental right that people relied on to
make decisions about their own bodies, health, and lives. As a result, many states are now
banning abortion at various stages of pregnancy or banning it altogether.

Research has proven that restrictions on abortion access cause harm to women’s
physical and mental health as well as their social and economic well-being. When people
seek abortion care and are unable to receive it, the well-being of their existing children is also
negatively impacted.

The harms that result from barriers to abortion disproportionately impact the most
vulnerable or marginalized people in our society, including poor people; people of color;
young people; people with disabilities; immigrants; people in rural communities; lesbian,
bisexual, queer women; and transgender, gender non-conforming, and intersex people. Given
the ongoing crisis of Black and Indigenous.

For these reasons and more, access to abortion is a public health priority for the
County of Los Angeles. Abortion also is a key reproductive justice issue—a component of
the complex, intersecting rights and conditions that allow people of color to regain and
maintain autonomy over their own bodies and pregnancies, their ability to have or not have
children, and to raise the children they have in safe and sustainable communities.
 OVERPOPULATION AS ECONOMIC ISSUE

Conversations about overpopulation can quickly become controversial because they

beg the question: Who exactly is the cause of the problem and what, if anything, should be
done about it? Many population experts worry discussions around overpopulation will be
abused by small-minded people to suggest some are the “right people” to be on the planet
(like themselves), and some people are “the wrong people” (usually people in poverty, people
of color, foreigners, and so on—you get the drift). But there are no “right” or “wrong” people
on the planet, and discussing the problems of global overpopulation can never be an excuse,
or in any way provide a platform, for having that type of conversation.

Each human being has a legitimate claim on a sufficient and fair amount of Earth’s
resources. But with a population approaching 8 billion, even if everyone adopted a relatively
low material standard of living like the one currently found in Papua New Guinea, it would
still push Earth to its ecological breaking point. Unfortunately, the “average person” on Earth
consumes at a rate over 50% above a sustainable level. Incredibly, the average person in the
United States uses almost five times more than the sustainable yield of the planet.

When we use the term “overpopulation,” we specifically mean a situation in which

the Earth cannot regenerate the resources used by the world’s population each year. Experts
say this has been the case every year since 1970, with each successive year becoming more
and more damaging. To help temper this wildly unsustainable situation, we need to
understand what’s contributing to overpopulation and overconsumption and how these trends
are affecting everything from climate change to sociopolitical unrest.
 BIASED PROBLEM

Webster's New World Dictionary1 defines bias as "a mental leaning or inclination;
partiality; prejudice; bent." Scientists are expected to be objective, and open to learning the
truth from their research. Yet, physicists are also human. Each of us has our own likes and
dislikes, preferences and preconceptions, and "hot buttons" that make us feel angry, uneasy,
or uncomfortable.

Bias can damage research, if the researcher chooses to allow his bias to distort the
measurements and observations or their interpretation. When faculty are biased about
individual students in their courses, they may grade some students more or less favorably
than others, which is not fair to any of the students. In a research group, favored students and
colleagues may get the best assignments and helpful mentoring. People often prefer
associating with other people who are similar to themselves, their family members, or their
friends.

The net result of these biases hurts physics, because people who are different and would bring
valuable new perspectives to the field have traditionally been excluded or discouraged by
those already in the field. It is not unusual for women, African Americans, Hispanics, and
Native Americans to feel unwelcome in physics and other scientific fields, because of the low
expectations their professors and colleagues have for them, and because of how they are
treated by the people who should be their peers and colleagues.

While it is probably impossible to eliminate bias, each person can strive to be aware
of his or her preferences and alert to situations where the bias can be damaging to the science
or ones colleagues. Also, one's can become a careful observer of others and take action to
counteract the unfair or inappropriate consequences of biases, especially those that work to
exclude or diminish people from different backgrounds than the majority.