Published in July 1st, 2010
Thomas Perls, Paola Sebastiani, and others recently published work that finds 70 genes to be involved in longevity (WSJ article). Using these genes, scientists could predict with 77% accuracy who would be exceptionally long-lived. Given this evidence, I wonder what the public will make of statements from people like the Blue Zone’s Dan Buettner that [...]
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Published in May 13th, 2010
Professor Nir Barzilai from New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine recently said that he thinks a longevity pill will be ready for testing in two years. He told London’s Sun newspaper that “Pharmaceutical companies are developing these drugs now. They will probably be available for testing from 2012.” It is unclear which company or [...]
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Published in April 23rd, 2010
What a great story in today’s SF Chronicle. Hazel Soares now 94, has been married twice, raised six kids, seen two economic depressions, 15 U.S. presidents and two world wars. She’s been a working single mother, a nurse, a concert event organizer and an art lover. She has more than 40 grandchildren. And next month, [...]
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Published in April 2nd, 2010
Interesting press release from Duke University: “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….It is possible, if we continue to make progress in reducing mortality, that most children born since [...]
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Published in January 23rd, 2010
Today’s WSJ contained a well-written review by Matt Ridley of a new book about the anti-aging market. Ridley says that in “Eternity Soup,” author Greg Critser meets “snake-oil salesmen, then the hard-headed scientists and along the way people who cannot quite be pigeonholed as either.” He also notes that “average life expectancy across the world [...]
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Published in October 3rd, 2009
That was the headline from a recent AP story. Depending on how the research goes, that could be a very conservative estimate. Here’s more from the article: “James Vaupel of the Max Planck Institute in Germany and colleagues in Denmark examined studies published globally in 2004-2005 on numerous issues related to aging. They found life [...]
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Published in September 28th, 2009
That was the headline in a NYT article today. The reality is that scientific respect for life-extending research has been there for quite a while, it’s just that the NYT recently noticed. In any case, here’s an interesting prediction that was made at Harvard Medical School: ““In five or six or seven years,” said Christoph [...]
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Published in September 11th, 2009
This is great news from the Economist: “More children are surviving beyond their fifth birthday, according to a new report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). The child mortality rate—the number of under-fives dying per thousand live births—declined from 90 in 1990 to 65 in 2008, a drop of over a quarter. The number [...]
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Published in August 20th, 2009
Here’s the latest from the CDC (Aug 19, 2009): Life Expectancy at All Time High; Death Rates Reach New Low, New Report Shows U.S. life expectancy reached nearly 78 years (77.9), and the age-adjusted death rate dropped to 760.3 deaths per 100,000 population, both records, according to the latest mortality statistics from the Centers for [...]
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Published in August 14th, 2009
“We’re at the beginning of an unmanned revolution.” That’s what Gary Kessler, who oversees unmanned aviation programs for the US Navy and Marines, told the AFP. According to the article, “Robots or “unmanned systems” are now deployed by the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, spying from the sky for hours on end, searching for booby-traps [...]
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Published in May 11th, 2009
From the FT. The number was 15%, but has gone up with the recession.
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Published in May 8th, 2009
Here’s a detailed chart with the answer from the Economist. Japan, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and France are at the top.
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Published in April 6th, 2009
The NYT reports today that “A new DNA test for the virus that causes cervical cancer does so much better than current methods that some gynecologists hope it will eventually replace the Pap smear in wealthy countries and cruder tests in poor ones.” The study was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and [...]
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Published in March 24th, 2009
Oprah’s Dr. Oz just did a segment on longevity and caloric restriction where he said that “There’s one man in Oprah’s audience who may become the first man in history to live to be 150 years old.” Caloric restriction is the only known way at the moment to extend life. Also, today in the WSJ, [...]
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Published in March 2nd, 2009
A new Kaiser Permanente study says that “Drinking a glass of wine a day may lower the risk of Barrett’s esophagus, a condition that precedes esophageal cancer.” Apparently drinking beer or liquor didn’t help prevent cancer. Maybe it’s the resveratrol in wine that is the difference? This news must make GlaxoSmithKline happy.
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Published in January 27th, 2009
From the Guardian: A British woman has become the first in the world to conceive using a new IVF technique that could more than double the success rate of pregnancies. The 41-year-old woman was treated after suffering two miscarriages and having 13 courses of IVF, none of which led to a baby. [...] The process [...]
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Published in January 9th, 2009
Dr. Leonid A. Gavrilov, a Research Associate at the Center on Aging, NORC and the University of Chicago was just awarded a 5-year research grant from the NIH to study the mechanisms of human longevity. It is nice to see the NIH taking more of an interest in this important area.
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Published in December 8th, 2008
This bit of data was re-posted from Parade magazine on the GRG mailing list today. The numbers are of course projected to grow. How many people in this country are 100 or older? At the time of the last census, in the year 2000, the U.S. had about 50,000 centenarians. The largest number (5341) lived [...]
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Published in November 25th, 2008
This is great news, particularly since the American population is aging and cancer tends to strike older people at higher rates. From Reuters: “Cancer rates have dropped for the first time in the United States and previous declines in cancer deaths are accelerating, a report released on Tuesday showed as cancer-fighting efforts produced solid results. [...]
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Published in September 23rd, 2008
A study by Dr. Dean Ornish and his team showed that lifestyle changes including diet, exercise, and stress management techniques made a difference in telomerase levels. “Telomerase repairs and lengthens telomeres, which are DNA-protein complexes at the end of chromosomes that directly affect how quickly cells age. As telomeres become shorter and their structural integrity [...]
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