In his last book, How We Age, Dr. Marc Agronin wrote passionately about how we need to place greater value on our elders and hope for a better old age, even in the throes of illness and dementia. But he doesn't want us to simply gaze at the holiness of old age, nor does he want us searching for some magical Fountain of Youth that doesn't exist now and won't exist in the foreseeable future. Nearly every other book on the market takes these approaches, and the messages are predictable, tiresome, and largely untrue.

At the Miami Jewish Health System (MJHS), Agronin sees both the...