[Old age and illness--destroying the intolerable?]

The spectacular criminal case of a nurse who because of killing seven old patients in an intensive care ward had been sentenced to jail for 11 years is shown as example of radical thinking in the face of intolerability of serious illness and age. The deficit model of age is on the one hand justly criticized and called invalid, on the other hand negative aspects of age may not be concealed in the face of hedonistic principles of the present epoch. There is no doubt about the monstrosity of the case of the guilty nurse but it may be exemplary for a frequent defensive behaviour against the phenomena of age. If this is right this singular case may be characteristic of common thinking on the unbearable presumption of age. Self defense turning into aggressivity because of foreseeing the own fate of hopeless illness in moribund aged would then have to be seen as a socially significant attitude.