[extropy-chat] (health) risks and benefits along a bell curve ?

[Robert Bradbury]

On 3/17/06, gts <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I think what you should see, and what researchers probably do see, is a
> slight positive shift of the mean of the normal mortality curve for people
> who eat well. I think it's unreasonable to expect a sudden appearance of
> new statistical outlyers living to be 150.


This has come up recently on the GRG list.  The cause of death in the oldest
old seems to be leaning strongly towards systemic amyloidosis (perhaps with
complications as a result).  There *are* potential dietary and drug
therapies that can be used to treat this *if* you know enough to do so.
Unfortunately most GPs do not know enough about it to look for it, perform
the more extensive tests that may be required to confirm the diagnosis, or
suggest therapies.

I suspect that in many cases once one gets into the ones late 90's and
certainly once one has achieved centenarian status there is a certain amount
of "one has lived ones allotted life" perspective that occurs in both
patient and physician which causes potential life-extending methods to be
ignored.

Robert
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