The columnist betrays his/her youth in the following note from the promo blurb “Sex, sex and more sex, among your parents and grandparents. Did you just go “eeeeewww”? Prune-y skin is just the exterior, sex always remains somewhere in the mind.

Who is the intended audience, I wonder? Click the pic to buy tickets if you dare.

Hotel chains in the USA are lobbying the government to delay implementing a rule requiring them to install permanent lifts or ramps for the disabled at all public pools by May 21st. In September 2010, the Department of Justice issued a final rule reinterpreting a provision of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) to mean that such facilities were required; previously, many pools had portable, temporary lifts. The permanent versions cost between $2,500 and $6,500, plus $1,000 to $3,000 in installation costs, according to the Los Angeles Times.

I’m usually very clear about the distinction between disability and ageing.

The point here is, that we KNOW the world is getting older and that business and society will need to adjust to make the world age-friendly.

It is far cheaper to anticipate such needs in new projects now than to retrofit them later when legislation demands, as it almost certainly will.

By the end of 2011 the number of Taiwanese citizens aged 65 or above stood at 2.53 million, or 10.89 percent of the total population. By contrast, there were only one million senior citizens 18 years ago.

The government forecasts that by 2015 one out of five people in Taiwan will be above the age of 65.

Opportunities abound in the medical device manufacturing industry. The output value of Taiwan’s medical devices industry reached NT$92.8 billion (US$314 million) in 2010, up 12.5 percent from the year before.

The top three best-selling export products are:

1. electric vehicles designed for the elderly and the disabled
2. diabetes test strips
3. plastic supplies used in labs and operating rooms.

Blood glucose meters came in at No. 6, an indication of the great importance that seniors place on preventing diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, the most common chronic illnesses to strike the old.

Massage products, used to ease pain in different parts of the body, were the ninth most popular export item.

More details are available in the original article in Taiwan Today.

Although US centric, other highlights from this report include:

• Healthy 50+ Consumers are more likely to be women than men (53% vs. 47%). One reason for the gender disparity lies in the fact that women are more numerous in the 65+ age group as a whole because of the shorter life expectancy of men. Women are more likely than men to report that they are consciously pursuing wellness goals.
• Healthy 50+ Consumers account for 15% of those going to a family restaurant/steak house in the last 30 days and 16% of those attending a live theater event in the past 12 months.
• Healthy 50+ Consumers account for 13% of those buying books at a bookstore in the past 12 months.

The report is not cheap (US$3,850) but may be worth it for some.

Most companies understand that population ageing presents them with threats and opportunities. But how do they translate this global issue into the specifics of what it means to them? Where do they begin?

That’s why we created this extraordinary tool.

Now, new technology is being developed by a team at Newcastle University to help older drivers stay on the road longer.

Check out this video from the BBC

It deals with the limitations that physiological ageing places on our driving safety and enjoyment.

This article in The NY Times tackles the subject of what to call older people. One reader responded that retirees who specialize in whining and complaining are referred to as “geezers.” while others tend to use the “something” tag (60-something, 70-something, 80-something). Here are some of the debated options:

Service providers have different rules:

• Facebook allows relatives to close an account or turn it into a memorial page.
• Gmail will provide copies of e-mails to an executor.
• Music downloaded via iTunes is held under a licence which can be revoked on death.
• All e-mail and data on Apple’s iCloud service are deleted on the death of the owner.

All this raises the subject of privacy. Passing music on is one thing; not everyone may want their relatives snooping on their e-mails. Perhaps access should come only with an explicit provision in a will?

An online group of sex counselors is confronting growing rates of Sexually Transmitted Disease among the 55+ demographic. Can this be real? Apparently so. The website SaferSex4Seniors.org aims to tackle the problems identified here:

• 885 reported cases of syphilis in 45- to 64-year-olds in 2000; in 2010, there were more than 2,500.
• In 2000, there were 6,700 cases of chlamydia in this age group; the number ballooned to more than 19,000 by 2010.
• The numbers of  older people with HIV  has nearly doubled, and 15 percent of new diagnoses of HIV in the U.S. were in people age 50 and older in 2005, which is the most recent year that the CDC calculated the risk for this age group.