X-Message-Number: 24025 Date: Sat, 1 May 2004 10:46:18 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #24019 - #24023 For Kennita Watson: It's not that ALS can kill you no matter what your age, but whether the death rate from ALS differs with age. After all, if you were born with a faulty metabolism, you can die of heart disease or cancer in your teens or before. However I notice that most people dying of heart disease or cancer do not turn out to be young, or even in their 30's or 40's. I frankly don't know the statistics on death rate from ALS with age, and will look at the sources you suggest for any information about that. If more people die of ALS when they're old, then CR, if it truly acts against aging rather than against particular diseases, then it will lower the deathrate from ALS too. If it does not do so, even if ALS rates go up with age, then we know that CR does not truly act against aging as such. Statistics on how death rate from ALS varies with age might be hard to find. Moreover, even if CR does help aging (with ALS one of the conditions which happen with aging) then Walford may have simply been unlucky. If you read the papers on death rate of CR mice compared to normal mice, you may notice that not ALL CR mice lived longer than ANY normal mice. CR may even work against ALS, but Walford may have simply been among the unlucky few. Best wishes and long long life for all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=24025