Quality-of-life judgments, treatment decisions, and medical ethics.

Treatment of the elderly should rest on criteria that are morally different from those applied to the rest of the population. These criteria depend on perceptions about life and the quality of life that the elderly are more likely to hold than younger citizens. Six treatment axioms are proposed for avoiding subjective and often capricious quality-of-life judgments about the care of the elderly. These axioms rest on an explication of the moral difference between the elderly and the rest of the population.