To air these predicaments, "air"?
Dear teachers,
I read an article today, but I can't figure out the meaning of one world "air". The following is the sentence where it appears:
To air these predicaments is not anti-medical spleen—a churlish reprisal against medicine for its victories—but simply to face the growing reality of medical power not exactly without responsibility but with dissolving goals.
What does it mean?
Thanks a lot!
p.s.
the whole article:
Medical consumerism——like all sorts of consumerism, only more menacingly——is designed to be unsatisfying. The prolongation of life and the search for perfect health (beauty, youth, happiness)are inherently self-defeating. The law of diminishing returns necessarily applies. You can make higher percentages of people survive into their eighties and nineties. But, as any geriatric ward shows, that is not the same as to confer enduring mobility, awareness and autonomy. Extending life grows medically feasible, but it is often a life deprived of everything, and one exposed to degrading neglect as resources grow over-stretched and
politics turn mean.
What an ignoramus destiny for medicine if its future turned into one of bestowing meager increments of unenjoyed life! It would mirror the fate of athletes, in which disproportionate energies and resources—not least medical ones, like illegal steroids—are now invested to shave records by milliseconds. And, it goes without saying, the logical extension of longevism—the “ abolition” of death — would not be a solution but only an exacerbation. To air these predicaments is not anti-medical spleen—a churlish reprisal against medicine for its victories—but simply to face the growing reality of medical power not exactly without responsibility but with dissolving goals.
Hence medicine’s finest hour becomes the dawn of its dilemmas. For centuries, medicine was impotent and hence unproblematic. From the Greeks to the Great War, its job was simple: to struggle with lethal diseases and gross disabilities, to ensure live births, and to manage pain. It performed these uncontroversial tasks by and large with meager success. Today, with mission accomplished, medicines triumphs are dissolving in disorientation. Medicine has led to vastly inflated expectations, which the public has eagerly swallowed. Yet as these expectations grow unlimited, they become unfulfillable. The task facing medicine in the twenty-first century will be to redefine its limits even as it extends its capacities.
Re: To air these predicaments, "air"?
Quote:
TRANSITIVE VERB: 1. To expose so that air can dry, cool, or freshen; ventilate. 2. To give vent to publicly: airing my pet peeves. See synonyms at vent1. 3. To broadcast on television or radio: “The ad was submitted to CBS . . . which accepted and aired it” (New York).
To air in such a context would mean to bring out into the open, the way you take your laundry outside so that the air can dry it. However, it is often applied to ideas, problems, issues or complaints that someone wants to share openly. It may also be associated with the idiom "to air one's dirty laundry", meaning a public display of things that should be kept private, showing the world the flaws of your private life.
In your example, someone thinks that talking publicly about the issues in question may be inapproprate diatribe. The author argues that, in fact, the problems should be acknowledged publicly.
