In the broadest sense, medicine is a biologic-anthropologic model. The latest data on epidemiology and biology confirm earlier apprehensions about life expectancy, number of elderly, and the impact of mental impairment. The author wishes to reflect rather on anthropology by comparing the American and French cultures faced with the ethical dilemmas of aging and end-of-life issues. On this perilous frontier of biomedical ethics, the author suggests that the right to be treated as a person is an effective source of motivation for physicians to respect the dignity of geriatric patients in the context of high-technology medicine. (J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol 1990;3:231-236).
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