With all of the relatively new advances in nutrition and medicine the average human lifespan has increased appreciatively. For the most part, humans are living longer than ever. (I know that statistically there are segments of the global population which have shorter lifespans.) Ideally, we would all like to live long healthy lives capped off with a quick, painless death–no lingering in misery and disease. In reality, this very seldom happens.
I guess what I’d like to know is if we are setting ourselves up for more long term misery by trying to extend our lives to their furthest reaches. I’m not wanting this to degrade into a discussion about mercy killing, euthanasia, or various “Logan’s Run” type scenarios, but I’m sure it will happen anyway.
“It’s only common sense,
There are no accidents 'round here.”
Actually, the rise in life expectancy over the last century is a little deceptive. I’m 37. My chances of reaching 60 or 70 are only slightly better than were those of a 37 year old Abe Lincoln or any other 19th century white collar American. Most of the rise in life expectancy is due to a huge drop in infant mortality and job related fatalities.
Well, okay, life spans are getting longer, part of the reason being advances in medical science. Wouldn’t it be those same advances keeping us more comfortable in our old age? I’m not saying that the elderly are disease free, but they are certainly sitting prettier than 100 years ago.
“A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.” – George Bernard Shaw
It’s not just lower infant mortality that has led to longer lifespans. The huge decrease for women dying in childbirth is one factor, but we also have antiobiotics, greater safety, less really back breaking work for most people, access to medical treatment that is far superior to that of the past. All in all, you have a MUCH better chance of surviving into your 70s, 80s, 90s than people did a hundred or more years ago.
That said, yes, I would rather die healthy at 60 than be guaranted to live to be 100 but in constant pain and lack of energy. We are living longer, but probably dying even more badly than in the past.
Bucky
P.S. I agree with Eve on some people in particular living TOO long. Joe Piscopo lives and Phil Hartman is dead? There is no justice.
Living longer would be a problem except for two things:
There is no overpopulation problem, and won’t be, and
People who live longer don’t necessarily have more children, which means that you get a one-time slight increase in the population, then a new steady-state value. If they tend to have less children as has been speculated, then it’ll actually decrease population growth. But let me repeat: Overpopulation is not a problem, and is not likely to be. The world population is stabilizing, and may actually begin to decline in a few decades.
Umm, no. All you have to do is look at Social Security as a counter-example. Back when the Social Security program was first started, not that many people lived to age 65 and it wasn’t all that big a program because the ratio of retirees to workers was quite small. In another ten years, we’ll have one retired person for every two workers. The infant mortality rate doesn’t affect those figures, as few people who die in infancy ever make it into the workforce.
I understand the points you are making, but here’s my slant on each of them.
Your first point about there not being an overpopulation problem. I believe that overpopulation is already upon us. Certain geographical regions are unable to sustain subsistance living conditions for the human population that live in them. Maybe this calls for a redistribution of the population, but doing so is easier said than done. In other words overpopulation does exist, it’s just not globally rampant. Yet.
I don’t think that the concern is really about older people continuing to have children, it’s mainly about having multiple generations living at the same time. Of course you’ve got couples like Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones, but that’s another kettle of fish.
I guess you can say that we will never really overpopulate because certain controls will kick in to cut population down to size. Things like natural disasters, disease, environmental contamination, and starvation are good at trimming the fat, so to speak. To be honest, though, I’d rather that we curb population growth by living intelligently rather than letting nature and our own short-sightedness do the job for us.
“It’s only common sense,
There are no accidents 'round here.”
From the 1850 census:
There were 26,690,781 white people in the U.S.
399,461 were above the age of 70. I would have gone for over 60, but there were an extra 80 million white males between the ages of 60 and 69 living in California, so that might have skewed the results.
Anybody got better data out there? I’ve always gone with the theory that the declining infant mortality rate was largely responsible for the rise in life expectancy, but these data seem to indicate that most people didn’t make it very far into their old age back then.
This begs the question “where?” IIRC, India is a massively crowded poor country, yet they are a net exporter of food.
It’s gonna take a bit more before we have another whole generation around. It’s relatively uncommon for people in their teens to have living any great-grandparents, much less most of them. One thing that slows this down is that people are starting to have kids later in life, increasing the gap between successive generations.
In all likelyhood, it won’t take any major wars or anything. As we become more crowded and urban, children are less beneficial to have. In an agrarian society, having children to farm the land is useful. In a city apartment, it’s crowded, uncomfortable, and more expensive. As people get richer, there are more expectations, such as college and stuff. Basically, people are going to reproduce less if they are crowded, balancing out the tendency toward overpopulation.
Nitpick: human life span (the length of time a human body can live) has remained the same for thousands of years. Life expectancy (the length of time a person can reasonably expect to live) has increased.
Yes, people do die more horrible deaths now than was generally the case in the past. Previously, you were much more likely to be cut down in your youth by quick-acting diseases and injuries. If you survived to old age, the first major episode of illness would then likely kill you.
Now people (relatively) rarely die of infectious diseases; survival rates for the most terrible injuries have increased dramatically. Childbirth is no longer as perilous. If you don’t die a quick death when you’re young, you’re very likely to die a lingering death of some chronic disease(s) in your old age.
I’d rather die right this instant than to suffer forty years as a frail, weak, debilitated invalid. That’s just a personal choice.
People in past times die more quickly and less horribly?
Not necassarily try TB or slow deaths by industrial contamination, phospher(matchmaking),mercury(hatmaking),slow cynanide poisoning(tannery work)
How about steady declines of the immune system due to malnutrition,cold,contaminated water?
If you want to see how we were you need only look at 3rd world countries.(mercury is still used to extract gold and still has the same effect)
Living too long is only an issue when we reach a situation where the aged consume resources beyond the capacity of supply.
By the way ,there seems to be an underlying assumption that elderly=dependency whereas ,anecdotally,I’ve heard of cases where retirement seems to have precipitated decline.
I personally think that in westernised societies we simply don’t have a system that allows older citizens to carry on being and feeling useful.
