Providing support to persons with Alzheimer’s disease:between freedom and responsibility (Aupama Resp-Lib)

Fondation de coopération scientifique Plan Alzheimer contract (2009-2013) | Cermes3
Coordinators:Catherine Le Galès, Martine Bungener

In France, individual responsibility and national solidarity are jointly established in the middle of public policy relating to Alzheimer’s disease and more generally of public action targeting dependent seniors.In line with the theoretical work of the economist Amartya Sen, the research is based on the assumption that if there is no freedom, there can be no responsibility because only constrained desires and adaptive preferences can be expressed.The research questions the idea that public action can be entirely determined by a previous conception of individual responsibility.It seeks to show that public policies that call on the responsibility of individuals and families, as is the case today in the field of Alzheimer’s disease and more broadly of dependence, must be based on schemes that have been designed and effectively implemented for individual responsibility to be exercised, and to do so, must increase the patients’ and their families’ opportunities and choices, hence their freedoms.