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<font size=3>To Members and Friends of the Los Angeles Gerontology
Research Group: <br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Olshansky
vs. Vaupel debate. I am clearly on Jay's side... -- Steve
Coles<br><br>
</font><blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">
<font size=5 color="#0000FF"><b>"Disagreements on the Current
Trajectory of Life Expectancy" </b></font><font size=3><br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Here is
another article in a popular science
<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity.html">
series on the history of human longevity</a> and related topics. <br>
This looks at a mainstream disagreement in aging research, among
researchers who do not see
<a href="https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/08/nobody-is-arguing-that-radical-life-extension-is-impossible.php">
radical life extension</a><br>
as a near-term possibility:<br>
</font>
<dl><br>
<dd> One of the most fascinating debates in life
science these days is between
<a href="http://sjayolshansky.com/sjo/Background.html">S. Jay
Olshansky</a> and
<a href="http://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/institute/staff_directory_1899/james_w_vaupel_3.htm">
James Vaupel</a> of the <a href="http://www.demogr.mpg.de/">Max Planck
Institute for Demographic Research</a> in Rostock, GERMANY. They disagree
fundamentally about whether and how average life expectancy will increase
in the future, and they've been arguing about it for 20 years. Olshansky,
a lovely guy, takes what at first sounds like the pessimistic view. He
says the public health measures that raised life expectancy so
dramatically from the late 1800's to today have done about as much as
they can. We now have a much older population, dying of age-related
diseases, and any improvements in treatment will add only incrementally
to average life expectancy, and with vanishing returns. <br><br>
<dd> On the other side of the ring is Vaupel, who
<a href="https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/12/plasticity-of-l.php">
says that people are living longer and healthier lives all the time</a>
and there is no necessary end in sight. His message is cheerier, but he
takes the debate very seriously; he won't attend conferences where
Olshansky is present. His charts are heartening; he takes the records of
the longest-lived people in the longest-lived countries for each year and
shows that average (maximum?) lifespan has been zooming up linearly from
1800 to today. One wants to mentally project the regression line into the
foreseeable future.<br><br>
<dd> Olshansky says the only way to make major
improvements in life expectancy is to find new ways to prevent and treat
the diseases of aging. And the most efficient way to do that is to delay
the process of aging itself. That's something that some people already do
- somehow. Olshansky says, "The study of the genetics of long-lived
people, I think, is going to be the breakthrough technology."
Scientists can now easily extend lifespan in flies, worms, and mice, and
there's a lot of exciting research on genetic pathways in humans that
might slow down the aging process and presumably protect us from the
age-related diseases that kill most people today. "The secret to
longer lives is contained in our own genomes," Olshansky says.<br>
</i><br>
</dl> However, Olshansky favors a mainstream high-level
research strategy that could
be<a href="https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/02/enthusiasm-for-the-slow-road.php">
largely futile</a>: a slow, expensive process of building treatments to
alter human metabolism to look more like that of long-lived people, or to
replicate the effects of Calorie Restriction (CR). It will produce a
great deal of knowledge, but is unlikely to have much or an effect on
lifespan; this is an approach that may slow aging slightly, not create
rejuvenation, and not directly address
<a href="https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/11/the-engineers-viewpoint-treat-change-as-damage.php">
the root causes of aging</a>. If we want to see real progress in human
lifespan in our lifetimes, decades or more of healthy life added, even
for those already old, then we have to look toward serious investment in
biogerontology and synthetic biology.<br><br>
URL:
<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/maximum_adult_lifespan_debate_over_how_long_humans_can_live.single.html">
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/maximu</a>
</blockquote>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3>L. Stephen Coles, M.D., Ph.D., Co-Founder<br>
Los Angeles Gerontology Research Group<br>
<b>URL:</b>
<a href="http://www.grg.org/" eudora="autourl">http://www.grg.org</a>
<br>
<b>E-mail: </b></font><font size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>scoles@grg.org<br>
</u></font><font size=3><b>E-mail:</b>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>scoles@ucla.edu</u></font>
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