OLD AGE AND NATURAL DEATH 



numerical tyranny of greybeards — a matter which does not 

 worry me personally, since I rather hope to be among their 

 numbers. The moral is that the problem of doing something 

 about old age becomes slowly but progressively more urgent. 

 Something must be done, if it is not to be said that killing people 

 painlessly at the age of seventy is, after all, a real kindness. 

 Those who argue that our concern is with the preservation of 

 life in infancy and youth, so that pediatrics must forever take 

 precedence of what people are beginning to call "'gerontology'', 

 fail to realize that the outcome of pediatrics is to preserve the 

 young for an old age that is grudged them. There is no sense 

 in that sort of discrimination. 



4S 



