Health & Medicine - Posted by Karl Bates-Duke on Friday, March 26, 2010 12:20 - 4 Comments 
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(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5) Loading ...Will 90 be the new 40?
“It is possible, if we continue to make progress in reducing mortality, that most children born since the year 2000 will live to see their 100th birthday—in the 22nd century,” James Vaupel says. If life expectancy gains continue at the same pace, more than half of the children alive today in the developed world may see 100 candles on their birthday cake. (Courtesy: iStockphoto)
DUKE (US)—People in developed nations are living in good health as much as a decade longer than their parents did, not because aging has been slowed or reversed, but because they are staying healthy to a more advanced age.
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“We’re living longer because people are reaching old age in better health,” says demographer James Vaupel, author of a review article appearing in the March 25 edition of Nature. But once it starts, the process of aging itself—including dementia and heart disease—is still happening at pretty much the same rate. “Deterioration, instead of being stretched out, is being postponed.”
The better health in older age stems from public health efforts to improve living conditions and prevent disease, and from improved medical interventions, says Vaupel, who heads Duke University’s Center on the Demography of Aging and holds academic appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, and the Institute of Public Health at the University of Southern Demark.
Over the past 170 years, in the countries with the highest life expectancies, the average life span has grown at a rate of 2.5 years per decade, or about 6 hours per day.
The chance of death goes up with age up until the most advanced ages. The good news is that after age 110, the chance of death does not increase any more. The bad news is that it holds steady at 50 percent per year at that point, Vaupel says.
“It is possible, if we continue to make progress in reducing mortality, that most children born since the year 2000 will live to see their 100th birthday—in the 22nd century,” Vaupel says. If gains in life expectancy continue to be made at the same pace as over the past two centuries, more than half of the children alive today in the developed world may see 100 candles on their birthday cake.
This leads to an interesting set of policy questions, says Vaupel. What will these dramatically longer lifespans mean for social services, health care, and the economy? Can the aging process be slowed down or delayed still further? And why do women continue to outlive men—outnumbering them 6 to 1 at age 100?
It also may be time to rethink how we structure our lives, Vaupel says. “If young people realize they might live past 100 and be in good shape to 90 or 95, it might make more sense to mix education, work, and child-rearing across more years of life instead of devoting the first two decades exclusively to education, the next three or four decades to career and parenting, and the last four solely to leisure.”
One way to change life trajectories would be to allow younger people to work fewer hours, in exchange for staying in the workforce to a later age. “The 20th century was a century of the redistribution of wealth; the 21st century will probably be a century of the redistribution of work,” Vaupel says.
Duke University news: www.dukenews.duke.edu
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4 Comments
Michael B. Mayor, MD
J. Hayes takes a dim view of a proud profession, lumping medical professionals with the insurance business and pharmaceutical companies.
That’s not to say physicians and surgeons are fault-free, and, yet, there remains a basic professionalism in the practice that should not be overlooked.
The professional commitment to “do no harm” remains basic to what the vast majority of physicians and surgeons do every day in every encounter, with only a cynical few spoiling the barrel.
The benefits accorded to those patients with the best access are the best in the world. The system that medical care is embedded in denies those benefits to many, and results in the sorry statistics J. Hayes alludes to. The recently enacted medical care reforms will move us all in the right direction, and can be steadily improved as the legislation is modified and regulations are promulgated.
For the Republican party to demand revocation and to deny cooperation is an unsupportable position for them to take, and borders on insanity. We can figure this out, with patience, science and care.
T. Jay Gough
“…For the Republican party to demand revocation and to deny cooperation is an unsupportable position for them to take, and borders on insanity. …”
Good point Doctor. But politicians are rarely passionate about anything except getting re-elected. So I’m convinced that when these current “No-driven” rabid Republicans realize how hard it is to take candy away from a baby who has just learned how sweet it tastes – and how loudly their professional pollsters will have convinced them the passionate public ramifications would reverberate – they will suddenly and miraculously come to their senses – drop their self-imposed insanity defenses – and pony up to the credit table to loudly grab what they will have deftly managed to spin into their fair share. Because despite how they come across in their current sound bites, these people aren’t stupid…they are simply politicians. :D
NO! 90 is NOT the new 40!
How silly….good article though.
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I wish this were happening in America! Instead we have a “for-profit” medical industry devoted to profits instead of healthcare.
Doctors go into specialties instead of family medicine because it’s so profitable and lets them pay off their massive eduction debts. Then they get kickbacks from sending their patients for useless tests because they are so profitable. Dr. Richard Ablin of the University of Arizona, developer of the PSA test called the prostate test a ‘public health disaster’ and a news report of a new ovarian cancer test showed 64% false positives. New studies show even breast cancer screening does not save lives. Does anybody care that the fact that these tests are wrong most of the time cause massive personal suffering for the profit of the medical business?
The “for profit medical biz”, including health insurance companies, drug companies, medical device suppliers, and for-profit hospitals should consider whether they are going to be the next financial bubble, facing a meltdown as their business eats up almost 20% of the US economy yet we have one of the least healthy populations who are rapidly losing the ability to pay the ever-escalating costs.