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