X-Message-Number: 10988
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #10976
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 22:13:08 +1100 (EST)

Hi Tim!

I noticed your reference and will try to find it in the local (ANU) 
academic library. I cannot do this immediately because it is shut for
the Christmas holidays.

I must also point out that this does not mean that the mice in question,
assuming that they do not age, will necessarily live for a particularly
long time, even for mice. There is another experiment bearing on this
issue, which I will give you a reference for once I recover it (I think
it was published in Journal of Gerontology). Someone looked at the actual
lifespan of wild mice on a small island off of Britain. Their average
lifespan was about 2 months; the same strain of mice, in the lab, live
much longer than that. The author plotted the lifespan of these wild mice
against time and got --- the same kind of curve you get with radioactive
disintegration ie. they did not show a LIFESPAN in the normal sense.
Lifespans in our sense occur when the animals (or persons) live long
enough to die of internal problems, not external ones (such as consumption
by crows or eagles).  

So a lot depends on just how long the half-life of these mice might be. If
you remember that from the article, I'd be very interested.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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