Aging in America - Lawrence R. Samuel

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action, the expectations for this one were high. The goal of the conference was, in President Nixon’s words, to work out a “comprehensive national policy” for older Americans, something that did not come of the first summit.26 Some thirty-four hundred delegates would converge on Washington, D.C., in November 1971, each of them committed to pressuring the president to pass measures that would help older Americans. More than twenty million citizens were now aged sixty-five or older, obviously a large contingent whom any politician wanted to have on his or her side. Older people also consistently voted in great numbers, even more reason to try to win them over.27 Skeptics noted that it was not a coincidence that the conference was held just as the 1972 presidential election was heating up, however, and warned seniors thinking their ship would soon come in to curb their enthusiasm.

      Democrats, especially Frank Church from Idaho, were cautiously optimistic that the president’s call for this conference was more than just about getting reelected. Church was chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, which was an outcome of the second White House Conference on Aging. Church was a staunch defender of the rights of older Americans, and he made it clear that this third conference was an ideal opportunity to make real progress. “I think there is no country, that has the means that we do, that has done as badly in providing for the elderly as we have here in the United States,” he said on the eve of the conference, calling our performance in this area “one of the greatest travesties of the contemporary American way” and “one of the most conspicuous of our failures.” Church and his colleagues on the Senate Special Committee were fully aware that getting the president to agree to all their demands would be an uphill battle given his record (especially as there was at least as much interest among politicians in capturing the youth vote), reason enough for them to turn up the heat as the meeting approached.28

      Another politician friendly to the cause of aging was Representative James A. Burke (D-MA), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. In one speech leading up to the conference, Burke proclaimed that there was a need for “a revolution in our thinking about the elderly,” just the kind of thing the delegates and seniors themselves wanted to hear. Some kind of national policy on aging was expected to result from the conference, although both the president and Congress would have to agree to whatever was presented to them. Hopes were high that a bill creating a heavily funded federal department of aging with a cabinet-level secretary would ultimately result from the conference—only this was likely to lead to the revolution Burke had in mind. If affordable health care had been the biggest outcome of the second conference, however, financial assistance was clearly the goal of the third. Many retirees lived in poverty or close to it, making money the central issue for older Americans.29 The high inflation rate of the early 1970s was hitting anyone living on a fixed income hard, with those subsisting solely on Social Security especially vulnerable to rising prices.30

      The president was well aware that this third White House Conference on Aging was an opportunity to repair his image when it came to federal policies related to aging. Over the course of his first term of office, Nixon had not only cut programs related to aging but also vetoed a host of bills that if passed would undoubtedly have made life better for older Americans. Making comprehensive amendments to the Older Americans Act, giving more power to Flemming within the administration, and awarding big grants to states were just a few proposals that the president had killed, earning him a much deserved reputation as no friend to seniors. This was clearly his greatest chance to remedy his standing with seniors, a smart thing to do, if only for political reasons.31

      In words at least, Nixon acted quickly after the White House Conference on Aging, an obvious move to silence his many critics. The biggest news was that he would multiply the budget of the Administration on Aging by almost five times to $100 million, vastly improving services for the elderly should the Democrat-led Congress approve. Making Social Security benefits inflation proof was another promise he made, something that would be hugely beneficial if it too became a reality. Conference delegates were elated by the president’s intentions, with virtually everything they had wished for included in Nixon’s plan.32 During the 1972 campaign, Nixon understandably continued to appeal to older voters whenever he had the opportunity to do so. In a speech to Congress in March of that year, for example, he offered a five-point strategy to bridge what he called “the generation gap between those who are over 65 and those who are younger.” It was clear from his speech that he had relied heavily on Flemming to form the strategy, which focused on income and living conditions for older Americans. What was not clear was how such measures, while certainly helpful if enacted, would bring older and younger people together, making his message more campaign rhetoric than anything else.33

      Nixon continued to mention the “generation gap” in speeches during his second term, however, seeing it as a highly charged term that made him appear to be a uniting rather than a divisive political force. “We cannot afford a generation gap which shuts out the young in this country but neither can we afford a generation gap that shuts out the old,” he said in an October 1972 radio address, calling on all Americans to develop a new attitude toward aging. He was especially proud to announce that Program Find, a program his administration had launched, had so far been a success. Some three hundred thousand “isolated” older people had been “found” and were now receiving the help they were entitled to but otherwise would not get, the president claimed, an example of his commitment to those over sixty-five. Riffing on “black power”—a bit ironically given his often contentious relationship with leaders of the African American community—he proclaimed that “senior power” was a valuable resource for the country, a prime example of his efforts to hold together an increasingly fragmented nation.34

       The Walking Wounded

      While Washington moved slowly toward passing measures designed to better the lives of older Americans after the historic White House conference in 1971, experts in some aspect of aging continued to get together to discuss what else could and should be done. The Annual Conference on Aging, which had been sponsored by the University of Michigan since 1948, was a central gathering place for gerontologists and others interested in the social and cultural dynamics of aging in America. Susan Sontag, the author and critic, made an appearance at the 1974 conference, for example, quite fitting given that this meeting was devoted to issues faced by older women. In her speech, entitled “The Double Standard of Aging,” Sontag discussed the inequalities that existed between older men and older women, an expression of the vast gender bias of the time. While aging men simply met their natural fate as they got older, she argued, women were seen as facing a losing battle and were socially chastised for showing the physical signs of age. Given this view, she asked, was it surprising that many women lied about their age and did everything they could to preserve their youthful looks?35 To Sontag’s point, an increasing number of fiftyish women reaching menopause were seeking estrogen therapy in the hope that it would keep them looking and feeling young. The body stops producing estrogen during menopause, making many women (and some physicians) think that continuous, large doses would delay the effects of what was commonly called the “change of life.” The research was unclear, but most doctors hesitantly provided the hormone to their patients when pressured to do so.36

      The limits some women and men would go to try to slow the aging process were sometimes extreme. Visitors returning from Romania (and some other countries) in the late seventies were bringing in a drug called Gerovital H3 that purportedly had antiaging properties. The drug was not approved in the United States, and for good reason: controlled trials showed that it did absolutely nothing to improve the physical or mental health of patients.37 This was not the first time Romania was believed to the source of some magical potion created for modern-day Ponce de Leóns. A dozen years earlier, a biochemist from that country cooked up a “youth cocktail” said to reverse some of the effects of aging. (The key ingredient was cysteine, an amino acid commonly used in food, pharmaceutical, and personal-care products.) A decade or so before that, another Romanian scientist was injecting people with some kind of “rejuvenation treatment,” which also turned out to be a complete hoax.38

      Of course, one did not have to smuggle in a drug from a foreign country to antiage, at least cosmetically. Plastic surgery boomed in the United States in the 1970s as Americans sought all

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