Life Expectancy won't Budge Much
From "In Search of Methuselah: Estimating the Limits to Human Longevity" by Olshansky, et al. (1990):
They estimate that if we cure all cancer, we would only increase the life expectancy of Americans (in 1985) by a little over 3 years. Same for heart disease. If we cure all circulatory diseases, diabetes and cancer, life expectancy would increase only by about 15.5 years. Now 15.5 more years would be great but it wouldn't be civilization altering. After all, we have already increased life expectancy over the 20th century by about 30 years. Another 15 wouldn't be out of the ordinary. The figure below shows the reduction in mortality resulting from elimination of various diseases.
Every night on the news we hear of new treatments and medications that reduce mortality rates from various diseases and one could get the impression from all of this that overall mortality will greatly drop in the near future, however, the figure above suggests otherwise. Eliminating all the diseases you have ever heard of would only increase life expectancy a couple of decades but we will still die of cell senescence. I understand that Aubrey de Grey plans on reversing damage from metabolism rather than its pathologies, like the diseases in the figure above. My point is that
the vast majority of money currently being spent in the World to combat disease won't actually result in dramatic improvements in life expectancy even if all that research is entirely successful.
As Olshansky, et al., say in their paper: "the period of rapid increases in life expectancy in developed nations has come to an end."
They estimate that if we cure all cancer, we would only increase the life expectancy of Americans (in 1985) by a little over 3 years. Same for heart disease. If we cure all circulatory diseases, diabetes and cancer, life expectancy would increase only by about 15.5 years. Now 15.5 more years would be great but it wouldn't be civilization altering. After all, we have already increased life expectancy over the 20th century by about 30 years. Another 15 wouldn't be out of the ordinary. The figure below shows the reduction in mortality resulting from elimination of various diseases.
Every night on the news we hear of new treatments and medications that reduce mortality rates from various diseases and one could get the impression from all of this that overall mortality will greatly drop in the near future, however, the figure above suggests otherwise. Eliminating all the diseases you have ever heard of would only increase life expectancy a couple of decades but we will still die of cell senescence. I understand that Aubrey de Grey plans on reversing damage from metabolism rather than its pathologies, like the diseases in the figure above. My point is that
the vast majority of money currently being spent in the World to combat disease won't actually result in dramatic improvements in life expectancy even if all that research is entirely successful.
As Olshansky, et al., say in their paper: "the period of rapid increases in life expectancy in developed nations has come to an end."
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