Holtz Center for Science & Technology Brownbag Series

Of the 15,000 who died in the 2003 heat wave in France, four-fifths were over 75. While the elderly are more susceptible to heat stroke, a significant component of this mortality resulted from social phenomena. Richard Keller (Medical History & Bioethics) explores how the disaster exploited an ecology of vulnerability with origins in the politics of old age in France since the 1960s, when a range of policies cast the elderly as a population at the limits of citizenship.