Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is insulin expensive? That market is huge.
It's only expensive in the US...
Fair enough. But the point is that wide appeal does not guarantee low prices.
Is Life Expectancy Finally Topping Out?
41–50 of 62 posts
Re: Is Life Expectancy Finally Topping Out?
#42My grandmother was born in 1912 and live to 97. She: - was born in a time with no antibiotics - lived on a farm with all of it's inherent risks - lived through World War 1 (granted in the United States) - survived the "Spanish Flu" (although as someone under 10 whereas hardest hit were adults) - lived through the Depression - started having children post World War 2 (now with antibiotics available). I've often though…
I haven't come across any information that would indicate that we can generalize a person's immune system to be better than another's, outside of specified immune system disorders that have been defined. The immune system and the body in general are such a complex mechanism that it's impossible to claim one or a few persons surviving in one or a few instances and environments indicates they will have greater odds of…
>I haven't come across any information that would indicate that we can generalize a person's immune system to be better than another's,
There's definitely people who seem to get sick all the time and people who don't. Ask any schoolteacher and they'll tell you that for every cough/cold/whatever that goes around there's a couple kids that always get it and some that never do. Of course there's other variables like hand washing and whatnot but there's probably still some differences between people. Whether these are genetic or environmental (e.g. nutrition) I don't know.
Re: Is Life Expectancy Finally Topping Out?
#43My understanding is that the doubling in life expectancy over the last 150-200 years was primarily due to the drastic reduction in infant mortality and elimination of most infectious diseases. If you only look at life expectancy from the point of reaching adulthood, the change hasn't been nearly as dramatic.
This meme has to die.
Yes it's interesting that childhood mortality has a larger effect than expected by laypeople.
But we have still made huge improvements, look at the current difference between countries -
https://www.helpage.org/global-agewatch/population-ageing-da...
But yes this article confuses the issue, and yes it's hard to get a good graph showing life expectancy at post infant levels.
Even eliminating smoking in countries (Which is basically happening) is 1 or 2 years - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK62363/table/ch5.t2/?re...
Re: Is Life Expectancy Finally Topping Out?
#44My understanding is that the doubling in life expectancy over the last 150-200 years was primarily due to the drastic reduction in infant mortality and elimination of most infectious diseases. If you only look at life expectancy from the point of reaching adulthood, the change hasn't been nearly as dramatic.
And if you add in modern abortions to life expectancy then the view also changes.
Re: Is Life Expectancy Finally Topping Out?
#45My understanding is that the doubling in life expectancy over the last 150-200 years was primarily due to the drastic reduction in infant mortality and elimination of most infectious diseases. If you only look at life expectancy from the point of reaching adulthood, the change hasn't been nearly as dramatic.
Yes. When most people say "life expectancy" they mean "life expectancy at birth." Even in the depths of the middle ages when life expectancy at birth was around 30 years, most people who lived to adulthood lived into their 60s and 70s.
Re: Is Life Expectancy Finally Topping Out?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
And we will be able pretty soon to replace failed organs - anything but the brain itself should be replaceable in 30 years at the latest, I bet. With the progress that is being made right now, I'd say prototypes should exist in a decade, and another 20 years to let the economies of scale work. What has not caught up with reality yet is society: how are people living 100+ years supposed to be financed? Do we expect pe…
I feel food production shouldn't really be an issue, of course depending on the food type. But the tiny country of The Netherlands is a huge food exporter [0]. Certainly other countries could learn a thing or two [1] on food production from The Netherlands. --- [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-... [1]: https://www.wur.nl/en/Education-Programmes/master/MSc-progra...
The Dutch mainly produce plant stuff - which is indeed easy to scale up. The problem is that veggies are not the part that causes problems... it's meat, both land animals (cattle, pigs, poultry) and water animals. The rising meat demand especially in the exploding middle class in formerly poor countries such as China and India has to be produced somewhere, and animals have the problem that they create massive amounts of feces which:
- for land animals are carted across half of Europe as both Germany and the Netherlands produce more feces than can be brought out to fields
- for fish, contaminate the farms and the freshwater in which the farms are set. In addition the fish food that does not get eaten by the fish causes algae and other pest blooms in the waters, plus the attraction that fish farms pose to predators.
Re: Is Life Expectancy Finally Topping Out?
#47My understanding is that the doubling in life expectancy over the last 150-200 years was primarily due to the drastic reduction in infant mortality and elimination of most infectious diseases. If you only look at life expectancy from the point of reaching adulthood, the change hasn't been nearly as dramatic.
And if you add in modern abortions to life expectancy then the view also changes.
And if you add in sperm lost in condoms to life expectancy then the view also changes.
Re: Is Life Expectancy Finally Topping Out?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
That does not seem to be accurate for the US from 1900 looking at a life table. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/lifetables/life1890-1910.pdf Page 52 Men in 1900 life expectancy at 20: 42.48 Page 54 Women in 1900 life expectancy at 20: 43.6 The Social Security life table for 2016 lists 56.91 years at 20 a gain of ~13.9 years in the last 116. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
56 looks like a small number compared with other developed countries
It's additional years of life - so 76 total.
Re: Is Life Expectancy Finally Topping Out?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
And we will be able pretty soon to replace failed organs - anything but the brain itself should be replaceable in 30 years at the latest, I bet. With the progress that is being made right now, I'd say prototypes should exist in a decade, and another 20 years to let the economies of scale work. What has not caught up with reality yet is society: how are people living 100+ years supposed to be financed? Do we expect pe…
I feel food production shouldn't really be an issue, of course depending on the food type. But the tiny country of The Netherlands is a huge food exporter [0]. Certainly other countries could learn a thing or two [1] on food production from The Netherlands. --- [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-... [1]: https://www.wur.nl/en/Education-Programmes/master/MSc-progra...
They are also a huge importer of input materials for their farming machine. Fertilizer, livestock fodder (that will result in even more fertilizer), fossil energy to fuel greenhouses.
Thinking of modern Dutch agriculture as food production is misleading, it's more meaningful to think of it as a refining process. Cheap nutrients go in, expensive nutrients go out.
Re: Is Life Expectancy Finally Topping Out?
#50My grandmother was born in 1912 and live to 97. She: - was born in a time with no antibiotics - lived on a farm with all of it's inherent risks - lived through World War 1 (granted in the United States) - survived the "Spanish Flu" (although as someone under 10 whereas hardest hit were adults) - lived through the Depression - started having children post World War 2 (now with antibiotics available). I've often though…
> and suddenly you have a generation of children where infant mortality etc goes way down (again thanks to antibiotics)
Infant mortality went down in white communities, there is still a disparity between infant mortality in white communities and urban/african-american communities. Some communities have the infant mortality rate equal to a third-world country.