Social and legal problems of discrimination by age in the medical field

The article aims to analyze the medical and legal aspects of human equality. Discrimination in the medical field affects both medical personnel and patients. The authors have used the method of comparison of legal regulations of various states, the systematic method, which allowed to reconcile the approaches: medical and legal and the synergistic method as a method of development of a modern globalizing society. It has been found that the typical policy of agism includes the requirement to examine elderly physicians as to their competence or skills without objective and substantiated reasons. Everything leads to the conclusion that, discrimination of elderly patients manifests itself in treating them with less respect and courtesy and providing a worse level of services in medical institutions. Discrimination of gediatric patients is caused by their lack of legal opportunity to express their opinion on consent or voluntary refusal of treatment, including vaccinations.