X-Message-Number: 31898
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:12:49 -0400
From: 
Subject: Re: Human Lifespans Nearly Constant for 2,000 Years

   The Skeptic who authored this essay is not
called a "Bad Science Columnist" for nothing.
He is a terrible scientist, a medical Luddite
and he confuses life expectancy with maximum
lifespan. Extending life expectancy without
extending maximum lifespan is called "squaring
the curve" -- and the curve has done a lot
of squaring in the last 2,000 years.

     Life expectancy for all ages has increased
considerably in the last 2,000 years, and even
in the last 50 years  as can be seen from historical
data collected by the US Bureau of Statistics:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html

  In the hundred years from 1850 to 1950
there was indeed a dramatic reduction in
infant mortality compared to the increased
life expectancy for other ages. But from
1950 to 2004 life expectancy for a 40-year
old white person increased by seven years
(blacks slightly less) -- whereas life
expectancy for newborns increased less
than ten years during the same period.

   Modern medicine has not only benefited
infants, it has benefited everyone. Cars
and roads are much safer too -- the chances
of dying in an automobile accident in 1953
was four times greater per mile driven than
in 2003. Health consciousness has increased
as well. The prevalence of cigarette smoking
in the US dropped from 37.4% in 1970 to
25.5% in 1990:

http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/full/94/2/251?view=long&pmid=14759934

Only 26% of smokers live to age 80 ? in contrast
with 57% of nonsmokers [ADDICTION 97:15-28 (2002)].
Claims that there is nothing that can be done
to significantly increase life expectancy are false.

      -- Ben Best

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