Comments on: Can our track record in cancer research give us a hint of what we can expect in longevity research?

By: Ward

Ward — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 02:16:58 +0000

Nerai,

I believe I do have some graphs on the rising incidence of cancer as we age – but it might take me a couple days to get to it because of schedule – but I will post it when I get a chance.

thanks for your question.

By: Nerai

Nerai — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:06:32 +0000

would you also have a graph concerning the cancer incidence in aging population, as in age and the increased incidence of cancer?

By: Roko

Roko — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:12:55 +0000

ah, thanks – I should have a few more “deep” blog posts out in the next week, hope you like them.

re: “not very encouraging results”, i have had another thought… I may do a short blog response…

By: Ward

Ward — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:31:08 +0000

Roko,
thanks for the comment and good point. I haven’t found the data regarding the other end of the spectrum of the lifespan yet. Combined with the apparent lack of results with cancer progress, and with very real gains in survival in childhood I ‘wondered’ (maybe I should have used that word instead of saying it is still an open debate if we have made gains at the far end of life spectrum. Maybe one of the readers will point to a blog piece or a data source so we can examine this question.
Don’t get me wrong I am a strong proponent of longevity research and try to personally make the correct choices in my personal life (based on current research) to maximize my lifespan, but I just happened to look at the cancer data and was surprised by what appears to be not very encouraging results – so I thought I should point out the facts as best as I can.
ps I like you blog and will have to read more of it.

By: Roko

Roko — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:09:45 +0000

“it is open to debate if we have made any gains on the other end of the lifespan spectrum.”

– Really? Can you present data on this please, for example the distribution of ages that people born in, say, 1880 died at?

I suspect that you will find that improvements have been made at the “old” end of life.

It seems to me (and again, we need data) that the average 50 year old of today has it a lot better than the average 50 year old of 1920 or 1950.

On way of combating the negative outlook of this analysis is to think of the question of fighting aging (or not) as a lottery. If we choose to fight aging, we live for a very long time with probability p, and die as normal with probability (1-p). If we choose not to fight aging, we die for certain.

An important question to ask ourselves is: what value of p are we willing to tolerate before we give up?

Personally, I’d say that I’d give up bothering at about 1/10000.