Patterns of incidence of certain diseases throughout the world : opportunities for research through epidemiology / Prepared for the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, and its Subcommittee on Reorganizations, (Pursuant to S. Res. 347, 85th Congress, and S. Res. 42, 86th Congress).

  • United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Government Operations
Date:
1959
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Patterns of incidence of certain diseases throughout the world : opportunities for research through epidemiology / Prepared for the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, and its Subcommittee on Reorganizations, (Pursuant to S. Res. 347, 85th Congress, and S. Res. 42, 86th Congress). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    It is clear that a sound approach to the study of aging must include work in a broad number of fields. These include: The biological sciences, wherein biochemists, biophysicists, and investigators in numerous other basic sciences must study age changes in matter and energy at the most basic levels, where the origins of the process of aging most likely rest. The clinical sciences, where we must seek means to prevent the development of chronic disease as a part of aging. ‘There is need also to develop methods for assessing the benefit an ill or disabled person may receive from available rehabilitation procedures. The behavioral and social sciences. Here we would assess the older worker’s response to increasingly complex technology, his place in a changing social structure and his mental health. All this work, however, can have its greatest meaning only when it is projected onto an international level. Theories and findings about the genetic, biological, physiological, mental, and social aspects of aging, and about the methods for giving the aged persons more dignified and healthier lives, will have firm bases only when they have been evaluated and tested under the many variables in different cultures. Gerontology already is a subject of world interest. In one degree or another, nearly every civilized nation is conducting research in aging, including countries in Central and South America, Europe, Scandinavia, and the Far East. Some nations, notably Sweden, were making distinguished advances in the field for some time before the United States directed its attention to the problem on such a relatively broad scale. It obviously would be in our own self-interest (fig. 2) to learn in more detail the work in gerontology of other nations, and to answer the hundreds of questions pertaining to the effects of aging of different environments. It would seem certain that the solutions to many problems in gerontology might come more easily and quicker with a broad program of. coordinated, cooperative, interchanging effort. This was the viewpoint expressed to this subcommittee by one of its most distinguished witnesses, Dr. Edward L. Bortz, a past presi- dent of the American Medical Association. His observations will be found in a transcript of the subcommittee’s hearings, soon to be published. H. AGING PROCESS SUGGESTS BASIC RESEARCH Basic research is another pursuit deserving attention on a world- wide basis. Its potential value is enormous in providing new knowl- edge about the aging process itself, as well as new insight into other major diseases. ‘This importance of basic research in biology and medicine is manifested in two ways: The first is in the interchange of newly developed fundamental knowledge among scientists around the world in a mutual, cooperative system of assisting each other. The second is the need for medical science to understand better the incidence and variable characteristics of specific diseases in different parts of the world and to relate them to variations in climate, altitude, food, culture, and other factors—often referred to as the geographic pathology of disease.