X-Message-Number: 1443 From: (David Lubkin) Date: Fri, 11 Dec 92 11:29:59 EST Subject: Longevity in humans and fruit flies ----- Forwarded **With Permission** From the Extropians Mailing List ----- (To get on the Extropians mailing list, send email to: ) Check out the 16 Oct 92 and 15 Nov 91 issues of Science. There are research papers and an article accompanying them reporting new studies of longevity. The rule of thumb that's bandied around (the Gompertz law) is that mortality rates increase exponentially with age. It seems to be true for most of adulthood, but none of the studies until now looked at the very old, e.g., humans over 85. Now they're starting to, and finding that the curve doesn't fit. Death rates level off or even drop (for fruit flies, the death rate drops way down after a certain age). Excerpt: "The simplest version of the biological theories, popularized by gerontologist James Fries, is the notion that the body naturally wears out at 85 or so, like an old car whose major systems are all failing at once. But that explanation doesn't fit the fruit fly data, nor Vaupel's human data. Vaupel proposes instead that death rates are not driven by an absolute limit to lifespan, but rather that they reflect a collection of causes of death, to which some individuals are more susceptible than others. Like fruit flies, he says, 'people are different from each other in terms of their vulnerability to mortality.'" The overview article and fruit fly studies are in the 16 Oct 92 issue; a Scandinavian census analysis is in the 15 Nov 91 issue. -- David Lubkin. ========================= ========================= The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. -- Frederic Bastiat ======================================================================== Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1443