A baby born in the U.S. this year is likely to live to blow out 78 birthday candles—a far longer average life span than someone born even in the 1960s. Heart disease is still the biggest killer but it, along with fatal infectious diseases and infant mortality have all fallen to much lower levels in the past half century. Researchers are now hard at work tackling the growing afflictions, such as nervous system diseases and Alzheimer's, which are far more likely to attack the ever more senescent population.
For more on Life Expectancy, read the Researchers Disagree About How to Extend Human Lifespan in the September 2012 issue of Scientific American.
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17 Comments
Add CommentThe article starts "A baby born in the U.S. this year is likely to live to blow out 78 birthday candles . . . " That would mean he or she would make it to age 12.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisoh, the calculus of life!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEach species has a maximum LIFE-SPAN. For example, in honeybees it may be 3 months, for dogs 15 years, for elephants 60 years, for humans 80 years, and so on. This is species-specific and remains unchanged unless the species itself transforms through biological evolution. That takes a very long time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLIFE-EXPECTANCY, on the other hand, is how long individual members of a designated species actually live, given their current living conditions. It may advance with improving environmental conditions but cannot exceed the life-span for a given species. Even a thousand years ago an occasional human lived to be eighty!
"Why We Die" is a misnomer. This article identifies some of the things that cause us to die, but the "Why" of it isn't addressed, much less answered.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe die because all our working part of body decay as we aged.I think that one natural process as second law of thermodynamic suggest.Our lifespan is increased in recent period because we had conquered most diseases of germs by scientific research. We must remember what may progress we did or will do in science but sciences never make us immortal, if we became immortal there is no meaning to our life.Only death is giving meaning to our life.If there is no death no meaning to evolution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly if you consider blowing one candle at age of 1 , two candles at 2, three candles at age of 3, and so on. But if you consider one candle at age 1, 2 t 2, etc, 9 at 9, and 2 candles at age of 10, 2 candles at 11, and 2 candles at 12, you will have now only 15 candles at age of 12. Joker. I am also aware of arithmetics progression.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat does it have to do with the subject ?
Well spotted. :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood thing i didn't scan the first sentence and move on, it would have made an upsetting fact to share over dinner with the kids.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Interactive"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHeheh... That's exactly what I was going to say.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, and the volume of contaminants we are exposed to keeps increasing, because they are isolated and added to our environment much faster than they are able to decay. Anything released to our atmosphere and our soil ends up in our water, since water's always the lowest point, and gravity just won't stop. So far, our world's fish are much more contaminated than we are...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChris - you raise a valid point. The iniquities in this article demonstrate just one more shining example of the disturbing trend that is prevalent all the way across the board in Scientific American's articles now. The publication can no longer be relied upon for the good and informative intellectual content it used to offer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother one bites the dust - it's a choice.
Here's a really good example of how, utterly pointlessly, to warp an author's obvious meaning without making any contribution whatsoever to the discussion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article really should address deaths by accident and deaths by deliberate violence. Those numbers are quite a bit more important than most of the natural causes discussed here. Nothing discussed here, for example, is even close to a leading cause of death for inner city young men.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPrey tell how dying gives meaning to life and/or evolution. It may be that the fact I will die makes my life more valuable, but gives it meaning? I'm not getting that relationship.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the contrary, the point of evolution IS survival. It's pretty much to reach perfection to the point of where we can't die from natural causes. And I think an even better question is why do our body parts decay? I've read that it's because we breathe oxygen.
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