Via Reason Magazine’s Hit & Run
... the debate over whether or not Viagra should be covered by it has revealed some interesting ideas that certain people have about older people and sex.
For example, in today’s New York Times, Iowa Democratic Representative Steve King (age 55), says handing out blue pills to oldsters is “unconscionable.” Virginia Democrat Jim Moran (age 60) denounces the plan as “scandalous.” Bioethicist Daniel Callahan (age 75) declares: “These are essentially lifestyle drugs…In many men, impotence is simply a function of age….”
Cancer and heart disease are functions of age, too. OK, erectile dysfunction may not be life-threatening, but most people will agree that sexual intimacy is a pretty important part of their lives.
We’ll leave aside, for now — and only for now — the disgraceful tendency for health-care providers to cover erection-dysfunction medication (for men) but not contraceptive pills or shots (for women.) It’s not that that’s important — it’s sort of crucial to people of child-bearing age — but we’re talking about medical benefits for people over age 65.
People seem to hate the idea of old people having sex. In the old film “Harold and Maude” (admittedly a slightly different context) the priest sums up the nation’s collective revulsion at the prospect: “[the idea of…] commingling with [Maude’s] withered flesh, sagging breasts, and flabby buttocks — makes me — want to vomit.”
All well and good I suppose, till you realize context is everything. I recall — at age eight or nine — sharing that exact revulsion when my friends and I realized we’d eventually start kissing other people on the mouth. (The meta-realization that after I got that puberty thing I wouldn’t even mind doing it only added to my revulsion.) The point being that, presumably, when you yourself are elderly sex with the elderly isn’t so bad. It’s certainly likely to beat the alternative.
I could go on in that vein for a while — a former roommate worked in a nursing home and talked about sometimes about policies that required them to tie people in their beds at night if they were caught having sex with one another — but I’ll leave it at that.
That last bit is telling though. You might have a case if you could somehow demonstrate that all elderly men had erectile dysfunction, but my roommate’s anecdotes suggests the case doesn’t hold up. Therefore, if erectile dysfunction is in fact a treatable one, then as long as it’s not put to non-consensual use (one’s partners presumably might prefer to be consulted) then in principle there’s no reason Viagra or similar medications for men — or, if the FDA ever gets off the dime, women — should be withheld.
Tip for the ages: Treat your elders the way you think you’ll want your children to treat you.
