Published 1 July 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b2605
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b2605

Obituaries

Mark Howard Beers

Highlighted the dangers of prescribing for elderly people

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Mark Beers published and publicised his cautionary research on drug interactions in older people. He showed that many were the victims of inappropriate and excessive prescribing, and he drew up guidelines that are widely used in the United States and occasionally in Britain. His work led to the eponymous Beers criteria for prescribing for elderly people—although, said former colleague Professor Richard Besdine, he was far too self effacing to have used the term himself. Beers, a geriatrician, was attracted to the specialty for the intellectual challenge of working with patients with multiple illnesses.

He was born in New York; his father was a brigadier in the US Air Force and his mother a nurse. He attended Polypred School, Brooklyn, and was refused entry into several premedical university courses because he had type 1 diabetes, diagnosed when he was 9. He graduated in science from Tufts University in Boston and did . . . [Full text of this article]

Caroline Richmond
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