ELDER ABUSE

Abstract

L. B. Cebik, Glenn C. Graber and Frank H. Marsh (eds) Advances in Bioethics: Volume 1: Violence, Neglect and the Elderly. JAI Press Inc., Greenwich, Conn. 1996, 240 pp. £62.50 Hbk ISBN 0-7623-0096-5.

This book appears to be the first volume of a series, although it is not clear what additional volumes will follow. The price alone suggests that it is aimed at academic libraries, although serious researchers into elder mistreatment may decide that it is a necessary addition to a personal library as a book of reference.

The Preface explains the origin of this series on Advances in Bioethics: ‘The magnitude of violence in the United States has become an increasingly grim reality for many Americans’. Walker and Maltby (1997), in their presentation of European research on ageing, recently drew attention to the sense of fear of walking out at night that older people have in all the member states of the European Union. The same appears to be true in the USA as well. The preface catalogues figures for 1992: 207,000 rapes, over 20,000 murders and 690,000 robberies. This has led the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to focus attention on violence and health, seeking to understand violence-related behaviour and its consequences. In 1993, the NIH set up the Panel of NIH Research on Antisocial, Aggressive and Violence-related Behaviours and their Consequences. The Panel included experts on ethics, criminal justice, medicine, behavioural and biological research, public health, epidemiology, anthropology, nursing, sociology, psychology and psychiatry. The Panel's purpose was to ‘evaluate the NIH research portfolio in terms of its relevance, adequacy and responsiveness to social and ethical concerns.’ It has been necessary to give this background in order that the book may be seen in context.