How osteoporosis went from a normal aging process to a disease.
In the middle of the twentieth century, few physicians could have
predicted that the modern diagnostic category of osteoporosis would
emerge to include millions of Americans, predominantly older women.
Before World War II, popular attitudes held that the declining physical
and mental health of older persons was neither preventable nor
reversible and that older people had little to contribute. Moreover, the
physiological processes that influenced the health of bones remained
mysterious. In Aging Bones, Gerald N. Grob makes a historical inquiry
into how this one aspect of aging came to be considered a disease.
During the 1950s and 1960s, as more and more people lived to the age of
65, older people emerged as a self-conscious group with distinct
interests, and they rejected the pejorative concept of senescence. But
they had pressing health needs, and preventing age-related decline
became a focus for researchers and clinicians alike.
In analyzing how the normal aging of bones was transformed into a
medical diagnosis requiring treatment, historian of medicine Grob
explores developments in medical science as well as the social,
intellectual, economic, demographic, and political changes that
transformed American society in the post-World War II decades.
Though seemingly straightforward, osteoporosis and its treatment are
shaped by illusions about the conquest of disease and aging. These
illusions, in turn, are instrumental in shaping our health care system.
While bone density tests and osteoporosis treatments are now routinely
prescribed, aggressive pharmaceutical intervention has produced results
that are inconclusive at best.
The fascinating history in Aging Bones will appeal to students and
scholars in the history of medicine, health policy, gerontology,
endocrinology, and orthopedics, as well as anyone who has been diagnosed
with osteoporosis.
