On Real Time with Bill Maher last week, Neil deGrasse Tyson stepped into a second cow pie when he said that:
“our life expectancy is three times what it was 150 years ago and everyone before 150 years ago. . . [everyone] ate organic. And half of them died before they were 35. Science matters in this.”
This is flat out wrong. At best, it is lying with the truth. Nobody died at age 35 in the past 150 years. Killed in WW I or II? Yes. Spanish Flu? Yes. In childbirth? Yes. But if you weren’t killed, you didn’t die at age 35.
My family came to the U.S. from the Netherlands 150 years ago. Many were still alive when I was born. Many lived into their 100’s. We don’t live “three times” as long. In fact, our life span is decreasing.
I noticed this when I moved back to the family farm. There just didn’t seem to be as many 100 year olds as I remember when I was growing up. I thought perhaps I was mis-remembering.
But then my near-100 year old aunts and uncles mentioned the same thing. People die earlier now – and of odd things. It used to be that if you died before age 90 you got killed by something.
So I took a peek. Indeed, in 1992, there were 12 verified people alive over the age of 116. Today there should be 24, as the population has at least doubled and verification has become much easier.
There are zero. Zero. The oldest person today is 116. Not 122, or 120, or 119, or 118, or 117 years old.
That’s what I thought. Any time you see a 100% failure rate like this, something is afoot.
Life Expectancy is just a math problem – it doesn’t tell you anything
Out of 1000 baby sea turtles, 999 die either immediately or within a year. One will live to be 50. So life expectancy is less than a month.
If one person dies at birth and the second lives to 100, life expectancy is 50 for that sample of 2 people. Childhood deaths greatly skew life expectancy numbers.
Neither of these tells you anything useful.
Sometimes looking out the window can tell you a lot
Because childhood deaths skew life expectancy numbers, a transparent researcher, at a minimum, will talk about life expectancy for those who reach 18 years. In 1875 life expectancy for an 18 year old was about 62. But we also had quite a few wars and of course the Spanish Flu. Some researchers correct for such deaths. Life expectancy then goes up to around 70 years. Not much off today’s number of 79.
Recently someone mentioned that life expectancy used to be 35 years. The farmers present jumped all over this – anyone can look out the window and see that no one in the last 150 years (when our ancestors arrived in the US) died at 35 of natural causes. So long as you weren’t killed by something, everyone lived into their 90’s and 100’s. This was observable.
It was vaccines and antibiotics that moved the “life expectancy” needle
It was primarily vaccines, penicillin and antibiotics that greatly reduced premature deaths – and life expectancy doubled. It wasn’t doctors being brilliant. Virtually none of my relatives who lived into their 100’s (106 being the oldest), ever even went to a doctor. That wave of progress is over – we have eliminated all of the big childhood killers.
Human life span has been fixed at 120 years for the past 5000 years.
I figured this out in the 1970’s. Scientists were telling us at the time that life span would double in the next 50 years. Really? To 240 years old? Because I had so many family members who lived into their 100’s, this frightened me and I was worried about living too long. You don’t want to be 130 years old when everyone you know is dead. So I started researching what it is like for people over 110.
I immediately noticed that almost all of the oldest people in the world were 119 ½ years old. Never over. And there were quite a few of them.
It made sense when someone pointed out to me that the Bible states in several places that “Man’s life shall be limited to 120 years.” Somebody figured this out thousands of years ago. I started to relax a little.
Indeed, we have numerous examples of people living into their 100’s throughout time. Pharaoh Pepi II was over 100 when he died around 2200 BCE. Ramses II was 90. Even Menes, who combined Upper and Lower Egypt around 3000 BCE was in his 80s when a hippopotamus killed him. 5000 years later, our first US presidents, those who were born in the 1700’s, lived on average to 75 and many into their 80’s and 90’s. Almost no US president has died before age 70.
Yet not a single US President has made it to 100.
But Pharaoh Pepi II did 5000 years ago, as did many other ancient rulers.
Maximum life span has remained static for 5000 years and for some unseen reason cannot be more than 120 years.
U.S. Presidents show how life span has been static
The 13 presidents who were born in the 1700’s achieved an average life span of 75 years.
The next cohort of 20 presidents who were born in the 1800’s achieved an average life span of only 66 years, an enormous decline. This is also when we industrialized, urbanized, and polluted heavily.
So far, the average life span achieved by presidents born in the 1900’s is 78, about the same as those born in the 1700’s. This is not a meaningful change in life span. All medicine did was counteract the harms that industrialized society was having on longevity.
Maximum Life Span has been decreasing as we eliminate “Blue Zones”
Researchers constantly lament that there is no profile that indicates who will become a “super-ager,” or someone who lives into their 100’s. A lot of them smoke. Most drink. All of them have some “bad” behavior.
Not to me. I think they all look very similar. This is what I have observed:
• Everyone who lived into their 100’s wasn’t trying to. If you try to live longer, you won’t.
• Everyone who lived into their 100’s didn’t care when they died.
• Everyone who lived into their 100’s took the middle road. Virtually all of my relatives who were super agers smoked – but smokers don’t smoke much on the farm. And they didn’t have secondary sources of pollution like in a city. Today my relatives in their late 90’s secretly smoke. I’m pretty sure light smoking on the farm was fine, secretly smoking isn’t a good thing. I suspect they will die earlier than their openly smoking parents. Note that the oldest person to ever live, Jeanne Calment, smoked until she was 117. She drank every day until she died.
• The oldest super-agers in my family all lived in mini “Blue zones.” My 106 year old Great Great Great Grandfather lived in the same house with his son and his son’s children. He smoked and ate fried eggs each morning that he boiled in a pan of lard. We all did. He worked in a coal mine when he first came to the U.S. He was missing an eye from a mining accident. He burned coal in the stove inside the kitchen house. Yet each generation after him didn’t live as long. I suspect because families started living apart.
• No Vegan has lived into their 110’s and I suspect they won’t. Watch the Vegetarian and the Vegan who have identical diets. The Vegetarian might become a super-ager; the Vegan will not. It should be obvious why.
To live a long time, be on the middle road, live with friends or family, don’t live in a city, and don’t be neurotic. The rest doesn’t really matter.
Neil got the science wrong
Neil isn’t helping matters by saying that we could expect to die at 35 in 1875 and at 105 today. Neither is true. “Science matters” indeed.
Fast forward to today when the population has increased from 1.65 Billion in 1900 to 8.2 Billion today. No one is now older than 116 – people aren’t living as long as they used to. We are all bunching up in the 90’s. This should tell us something.
We need to focus on why there are no people today aged 117, 118, 119, or 120. There used to be.