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| ISBN-13: | 9781938803598 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Addicus Books |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 264 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Hello, Methuselah!
Living to 100 and Beyond
By George Webster, John Ritland
Addicus Books, Inc.
Copyright © 1997 George WebsterAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-938803-59-8
CHAPTER 1
Thinking the Unthinkable
Let's give everyone a 300-year life. How valuable life would be if it lasted for 300 years! — Karel Capek, The Makropoulos Secret
Let's begin by considering how we can extend life. From the standpoint of science, it is simple. We extend life by identifying the things that kill us and by getting rid of them. Diseases kill us. Accidents kill us. Aging kills us. Whether it's 100 years today or 300 years tomorrow, we live longer every time we:
* Prevent diseases and accidents,
*Cure the diseases we don't prevent, and
* Control aging.
At first glance, it seems unbelievable that we could overcome these barriers to longer life. But if we analyze them, they aren't nearly as formidable as they appear. Each is big, but we don't try to solve them all at once. We do what the engineers did to go to the moon. We divide the big problems into smaller problems, divide those into still smaller ones, and then solve each.
When people think of living longer, they usually think of halting aging, as happened when the people in James Hilton's Lost Horizon entered the valley of Shangri-la. But if researchers tomorrow discovered a drug to stop aging, un-conquered disease would go right on killing us. The prevention and cure of diseases is just as important as the control of aging. The number of diseases is limited. Again, it may seem unbelievable, but at the rate medicine is advancing we should be able to prevent or cure essentially all of them in the twenty-first century. We can't keep moving forward rapidly without eventually reaching our goal. Just one hundred diseases cause 99.9 percent of all deaths. Thus, each time we learn how to prevent or cure another disease, we will extend life. Research today is working to conquer all one hundred, plus many more.
But if we live longer by overcoming diseases, aging will still kill us. To live 300 years, we must not only overcome diseases but also control aging. We are far along in doing just that in the laboratory.
The History Of Major Diseases
In Greek and Roman times, life expectancy was 20-25 years. It was little better than the 15 years estimated for early man. If we date human civilization from about 3000 B.C., life expectancy has been 20-25 years for most of our time on earth. Our ancestors had pitiably short lives.
Life expectancy was 20-25 years because of the towering barriers to longer life. The first was smallpox, the primary cause of death for centuries, going back to our earliest history. One was almost certain to get it, often at birth, and it killed half of those infected. Even in the 1700s, it killed 60 million Europeans, plus millions in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Survivors were usually disfigured and often blinded by the disease. If one eluded smallpox, other barriers blocked the way to longer life. Bubonic plague killed 90-100 percent of those infected. When it spread across Europe in 1347, 24 million people died. It hit again in 1361 and 1369, killing another 20 million. By 1400, a third of Europe's population had died from the plague. In the same period, it nearly wiped out the entire population of China. If one got past smallpox and the plague, longer life was often halted by tuberculosis (consumption), typhoid, cholera, diphtheria, or a dozen other diseases that constantly infected the population and killed millions.
Imagine a long, dark road leading to the dawn of immortality. If you had lived before 1700, you likely could have moved only 20-25 years along the road because your way was blocked by the massive barrier of smallpox. If you had surmounted this barrier, you probably would have lived longer. Your way would have been blocked by yet another barrier, perhaps bubonic plague. Each time you overcame a barrier, you lived longer, only to face yet another disease. We still travel this road today, but the end is just becoming visible — far ahead, but in sight.
The salvation for mankind was the rise of science. Scientists demand absolute proof of any claim before they accept it as a fact, and so should you. Today, we still have people, some charlatans and some well-meaning, who tout all kinds of unproven cures for diseases or aging. If we believe them, without proof, we are no further advanced mentally than primitive man.
Before 1700, physicians were helpless against diseases because scientific medicine did not exist. The accepted practices were to give patients herbal brews, hang amulets around their necks, induce diarrhea with purges, and drain their blood. Barbers performed surgery with no knowledge of sterility, so patients died in droves from infected wounds. The 1700s saw the start of primitive medicine and hygiene based on science. The life expectancy was raised to 27 by 1800. The foremost barrier to longer life fell in 1798, when Dr. Edward Jenner discovered how to prevent smallpox. The control of rats broke the barrier of the bubonic plague. The finding that bacteria cause a multitude of diseases led in the late 1800s, to a search for preventive methods. These, together with drugs, hygiene, sterile surgery, and progress in medicine, almost doubled life expectancy from 27 in 1800 to 47 in 1900.
Still, in the United States in 1900, one in five children died before age 6. Almost 40 percent of people died before age 30. The leading barriers to longer life then were:
* Pneumonia/Influenza
* Tuberculosis
* Typhoid/Cholera
* Cardiovascular Disease
* Accidents
* Stroke
* Measles
* Scarlet Fever
* Cancer
* Diphtheria
Six of these barriers are infectious diseases. They were a top priority for research in the early 1900s. Figure 1–1 shows what has happened to each.
Pneumonia has fallen to sulfa drugs, antibiotics, and immunization. It has slipped from being the leading cause of death in 1900 to sixth place in 1990. It would be lower if everyone were immunized. Tuberculosis has yielded to quarantines, drugs and antibiotics. It nearly vanished, but it has returned among illegal aliens, drug addicts, and AIDS victims. Typhoid and cholera have succumbed to immunization and public health measures for pure water, milk, and food. Diphtheria has been wiped out by immunization. Antibiotics have eliminated scarlet fever. Measles has declined steadily due to immunization.
As a result, life expectancy in the United States has risen from 47 in 1900 to 76 in 1996. It is 77 in Australia, France, Norway, and Spain; 78 in Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland; and 79 in Japan. Beginning with smallpox, the removal of barriers to longer life has quadrupled life expectancy.
Notice the trend in Figure 1–2, which shows life expectancy in developed nations. The period just before 1700 marks the end of thousands of years of life expectancy near age 20. In the past 300 years, the trend has curved sharply upward. It projects a rise in life expectancy of the populations of developed nations to age 150 by the year 2100. The life expectancy of health-conscious people will be 150 long before the year 2100, however. Their longevity will quickly curve upward to 110, 120, or 130. As we control aging, it will climb to astounding levels. Many will still be living in 2100.
Barriers Today
The past teaches us that we boost life expectancy by conquering the immediate barriers to longer life. Many improvements in medicine and public health have extended life, but longer life has come mainly through the conquest of infectious diseases. As we move into the twenty-first century, people will live longer than ever before. Yet we will face a new set of barriers, not from infectious diseases but instead from poor health habits, the environment, and genes.
Figure 1–3 shows cardiovascular disease and cancer are the biggest barriers to longer life today. Behind them, stroke, chronic lung disease, and accidents are major obstacles. Pneumonia and diabetes, although deadly, are lower hurdles because they are both preventable or treatable. AIDS, suicide, and liver disease are still lower barriers, although they kill thousands each year. The diseases seem daunting, but they are no more so to scientists now than pneumonia, tuberculosis, and typhoid were to scientists in 1900. We are advancing rapidly against all these barriers, extending life further.
Today's Rising Longevity
Our escalating ability to overcome today's barriers to longer life is not abstract. It strikes us personally. It's not your imagination that there seem to be more older people around or that they seem more active. In 1990 the U.S. Census Bureau found that the number of people over 65 had more than doubled since 1950 and had jumped from 25 million to 31 million people in the single decade of the 1980s. Even more striking is the rise in the number of people living past 85 and especially beyond 100. The number of persons over 85 is growing six times faster than any other age group. Figure 1–4 shows what is happening in the United States. In the early 1900s, few persons lived beyond 85. Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, the number of people living past 85 rose 30 percent each decade. That, however, was nothing compared with the 1980s. In that single decade, the number of people over 85 almost doubled. The U.S. Census Bureau expects those living past 85 to nearly double again by 2000. Note how the bars in Figure 1–4 curve upward. This rising curve forecasts a huge rise in the number of people living beyond 85 in the coming years.
Another sign of rising longevity is the many persons living past 90. By 1991, more than a million people in the United States were 90 years or older, with the number growing 42 percent since 1981. If the climb continues (and all evidence suggests it will), 90-year-olds in 2000 will be as numerous as 80-year-olds were in 1980.
A third indicator of rising longevity is the astounding rise in the number of people living past 100. Before 1950, it was rare for anyone to live that long. In 1950, only 2,500 Americans were over 100. By 1980, the number was 12,500. Then, in a single decade, the number leaped to 37,000 by 1990. In the next four years, it rocketed to an estimated 51,000. By 2000, the United States Census Bureau estimates the number of Americans living past 100 will reach toward 100,000. The upward trend should continue. At this rate, there may be 200,000 people over 100 by 2010, and a million by 2030.
A fourth indicator of today's rising longevity is the increase in the maximum life span, the longest anyone has lived. Reports of long life have been with us since Biblical times. According to the Bible, Methuselah, son of Enoch and grandfather of Noah, lived 969 years. Adam and many generations of his descendants all lived more than 900 years. Then the longevity of succeeding generations declined in a rather straight line, from 900 years downward to around 500 years, then 200, then 70, and presumably on down to the 20 years of Greek and Roman times.
There are claims of people living as long as 150 years today in the Russian Caucasus, Vilcabamba in Ecuador, and Hunza in the Kashmir of Pakistan. Regrettably, scientists can't verify them from birth records. For two centuries, Pierre Joubert of Canada held the verified maximum life span. He lived from 1701 to 1814, a span of 113 years. Since the maximum life span stayed at 113 for so long, many scientists regarded 113 as a limit we could never pass. Never say never. In the 1980s, as more people lived past 100, some began to live 114, 115, and 116 years, all verified by official birth records. By 1996, many had lived past 113. Since the 113-year limit is nonsense, who has lived the longest? For years, the Guiness Book of World Records said it was Shigechiyo Izumi of Asan, Japan, who died in 1986 after living to a reported age of 120 years, 237 days. Recently, though, the honor was given to Jeanne Louise Calment of France. On February 21, 1997, she reached a verified age of 122 years, surpassing Japan's Izumi. In his book, We Live Too Short and Die Too Long, however, Dr. W. M.. Bortz of Stanford University Medical School related the case of Arthur Reed of Oakland, California. Birth records reported his life span reached 124 years. Whatever today's maximum, as more people live past 100, many should move toward 120. Chapter 7, however, will show 120-130 to be the likely upper limit until we control aging.
A surprising result of rising longevity is the better health and vigor of older adults. From a survey in Our Aging Society: Paradox and Promise, A. Pifer and L. Bronte report, "Most men and women over 65 today are vigorous, healthy, mentally alert, and still young in outlook." This seems to be due to progress against diseases, access to good health care for persons over 65, and increased emphasis on health and fitness. A survey of 90-year-olds found 95 percent did not smoke, 88 percent did not drink in excess, and 77 percent exercised. Only 8 percent of people over 65 are in nursing homes. Many are victims not of age but of ailments like stroke, arthritis, heart failure, and Alzheimer's disease. To reduce nursing home populations, we must conquer those and similar diseases. The stereotype of feebleness as a part of old age is wrong. Except for victims of diseases, growing numbers of people over age 85 lead active lives.
The Road Ahead
Healthy lifestyles and high-tech medicine are pushing the life expectancy of health-conscious people past 100. All evidence suggests these trends will continue.
Today's science and technology are like nothing before in history. Research is progressing at an astonishing pace. Advances in medicine are coming at a rate unimaginable 20 years ago. We see the dramatic change in Figure 1–5, which shows the thousands of reports of worldwide advances in research. They only began to rise in 1960 but have since skyrocketed. Dazzling progress is evident not only in medicine. In fact, advances in all sciences and technologies are so rapid today that it is difficult to keep up with them, even with the help of computerized databases. Advances that weren't expected, at best, for 20 or 30 years are appearing today. The National Library of Medicine is receiving 1,700 reports every day of new findings in biomedical research. Each year, research advances more rapidly. As a result of ever faster discovery, we have amassed a body of scientific and technological knowledge so vast that the human brain can't comprehend it without the aid of a computer. It is a base of immense power for further progress. Adding to our scientific and technological knowledge every week are a million scientists and engineers in thousands of laboratories around the world.
To further speed our progress, we have also witnessed an explosion of new techniques in science unequaled since the 1600s when modern science began. In the past, each jump forward in techniques set off a cascade of advances in knowledge. Today's explosion is likely to cause the biggest advances in history. During the next 20 years, we will extend life by continued progress against diseases, especially cardiovascular disease and cancer. By 2030 we should be able to prevent or cure 90 percent of today's ten leading causes of death. By 2050, another 20 years of progress should result in the conquest of most diseases. By 2080, after 30 additional years of progress, there should be few deaths from disease. Unthinkable? Just watch.
Aging will, however, initially limit our newfound longevity to 120 or 130 years. Thus, overcoming diseases will probably increase the numbers of 100- to 120-year-olds. Until now, aging has not been an immediate barrier to longer life because diseases usually kill us before aging has a chance. As we progress in the next 20 years against diseases, and health-conscious people live on past 85, aging will become a growing problem. Despite the amazing vigor of many persons older than 85, the ravages of aging will cause problems for those who may be free from many diseases but who will suffer the physical deterioration of the aging process. Fortunately, while the conquest of diseases occurs, we will extend today's progress against aging. If the current rate of advance continues, we should be able to slow human aging by 2030, possibly as early as 2015. This may affect you and many other persons alive today. We should be able to control aging by 2050 and virtually eliminate it, probably with gene therapy, by 2080.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Hello, Methuselah! by George Webster, John Ritland. Copyright © 1997 George Webster. Excerpted by permission of Addicus Books, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction,1 Thinking the Unthinkable,
2 The Conquest of Cardiovascular Disease,
3 Progress Against Cancer,
4 Extending Life Beyond 100,
5 Your Inner Longevity Factor,
6 How Far Can Medicine Go?,
7 What We Know About Aging,
8 The Causes Of Aging,
9 The Search For Shangri-La,
10 The Highway to Immortality,
11 Changing The Course Of History,
12 The Future,
Appendix,
References,
Index,
About the Author,