Well, this is a headline we don’t see very often, but it shouldn’t surprise anyone. As older people become healthier, why wouldn’t they continue to have sex?

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More than 200 scientists and longevity activists gathered at UCLA recently to discuss advancements in repairing humans. New technology is making it possible to imagine a world with ever greater life spans, but old world issues pervaded the discussions.
The Methuselah Foundation’s Aubrey de Grey organized the event and kicked it off with a theoretical explanation [...]

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In case you haven’t noticed, life expectancy is growing. According to the US National Center for Health Statistics, “Life expectancy at birth hit a new record high in 2006 of 78.1 years, a 0.3 increase from 2005.” Here is their press release. AP also did a story on it, which can be found [...]

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This should be an interesting conference. The invite says:
“At Aging 2008 you will engage with top scientists and advocates as they present their findings and advice, and learn what you can do to help accelerate progress towards a cure for the disease and suffering of aging.”

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Last week, GlaxoSmithKline announced it will buy Sirtris Pharmaceuticals for US$720 million, giving weight to the claim that antiaging biotech firms can be a good bet. This is good news for Americans, given that a recent Harvard-affiliated study showed that some parts of the country have seen declines in expected longevity.
Sirtris, located in Cambridge, Mass., [...]

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Here is a recent Congressional Budget Office report on how wealth and education are linked to life expectancy.

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While life expectancy is going up overall, there are some areas of the US where it has actually decreased. It is difficult to pinpoint a single reason, but regions affected include the deep south, along the Mississippi river, in Appalachia, the southern plains, and Texas. Fried chicken is probably the first thing that [...]

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In case you wanted proof of this, here is a NYT report on an HHS study. The NYT says it’s a new study, but a web search brings up the same data that was published two years ago. I’ve emailed Dr. Gopal Singh to see if he has any updates.

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This article summarizes research by Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. He has found that a mutation that causes a decrease the activity of insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) results in short stature but longer life. Here is [...]

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Here’s an interesting story from the LA Times. Many of these drugs have been around for a long time, yet the LAT is reporting on them as if they are news. Well, there is some news here — the news is in the meme that’s being developed around the idea of fitness for [...]

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New data released this week shows that human evolution is speeding up — an interesting development given that many in the scientific community are hopeful that humans can take greater control over the process. At a recent conference in San Diego, scholars discussed how various religious orders may perceive radical life extension, one potential path [...]

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This is a very interesting op-ed by history professor Stephanie Coontz. She argues that historically government was not as involved in marriage as it is now and that marriage licenses are “no longer the chief determinant of which obligations a couple must keep, either to their children or to each other.” Clearly, she [...]

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This week, Dr. Gordon Lithgow, associate professor at the Buck Institute, showed up in San Francisco and spoke to a packed house on aging, new technologies and why interdisciplinary connections are helping to unravel the mysteries of growing old. While politics often slows down progress, computer scientists can play a role in speeding things up.
In [...]

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Well, except for the part that contains his apolipoprotein E gene, which predisposes a person toward Alzheimer’s disease. Maybe he thinks he will get the disease. I saw him on Charlie Rose a few months ago and he said, “Right Now, I think I want to live to be 90. I think [...]

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UK aging expert Professor Peter Piper recently spoke out against what he believes is a major health problem. It seems that the sodium benzoate used to preserve soft drinks may also be responsible for DNA damage. When Piper applied the chemical to yeast cells, it damaged an important area of DNA in the [...]

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HSBC released a new study yesterday called “The Future of Retirement,” showing that early retirement is no longer very popular. They interviewed 21,000 people in 21 countries, and in the US, the study says that, “older people contribute $19.2 billion in income tax and $18.9 billion in voluntary work. The USA epitomises the global [...]

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Want to know which countries have the longest life expectancies? Take a look at this chart.

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A Chicago divorce lawyer recently paid for a billboard ad that said, “Life’s short. Get a Divorce.” It caused a huge storm of controversy, but when you think about it, the lawyer actually got it wrong. It’s not that life is short at all. If life were short, then a divorce [...]

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Researchers in La Jolla, CA recently announced that they have “identified a critical gene that specifically links calorie restriction (CR) to longevity.” We already know that massively limiting the amount of calories one eats (caloric restriction) can extend life, but we can’t yet exactly explain why.
The gene, which encodes a protein called PHA-4, amplified [...]

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I don’t normally watch Charlie Rose, but this series is pretty good.

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