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CHILDHOOD MORTALITY affects life expectancy numbers. "During the early 1600s in England, life expectancy was only about 35 years, largely because two-thirds of all children died before the age of four. The average life expectancy in Colonial America was under 25 years in the Virginia colony, and in New England about 40% of children failed to reach adulthood. During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy View in LinkedIn

AGING IS NOT THERMODYNAMICALLY MANDATED. "Entropy (disorder) must increase inevitably within a closed system, but living beings are not closed systems. It is a defining feature of life that it takes in free energy from the environment and unloads its entropy as waste. Living systems can even build themselves up from seed, and routinely repair themselves. There is no thermodynamic necessity for senescence." https://lnkd.in/d9VA6CJ View in LinkedIn

HUMAN LONGEVITY INC. "J. Craig Venter's Human Longevity, Inc. has refueled in the race to build an industry-leading repository of genomes and associated data. The refueling took the form of a $220 million Series B round, which reportedly valued the company at upward of $1.2 billion and attracted the support of long-time HLI backers Celgene ($CELG) and Illumina ($ILMN)." https://lnkd.in/daDP7Qf View in LinkedIn

GOOGLE ANTI-AGING MOONSHOT. In 2013, Google announced Calico, a new company based in San Francisco that will focus on aging through new technologies, lead by the truly remarkable Arthur D. Levinson. "Announcing this new investment, Larry Page, Google CEO said: “Illness and aging affect all our families. With some longer term, moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives.” http://googlepress.blogspot.com.es/2013/09/calico-announcement.html?m=1 View in LinkedIn

STREAM OF ANTI-AGING MOVEMENTS. "In 1976, futurists Joel Kurtzman and Philip Gordon wrote No More Dying. The Conquest Of Aging And The Extension Of Human Life. In 1980, Saul Kent published The Life Extension Revolution. In 1983, Roy Walford, a life-extensionist and gerontologist, published a popular book called Maximum Lifespan. In 2003, The Immortal Cell: One Scientist's Quest to Solve the Mystery of Human Aging, by Michael D. West was published." https://lnkd.in/dSjbPFq View in LinkedIn

GIANT LIFESPANS AND EVEN IMMORTALITY are demonstrated by numerous examples from the natural world. This rather stunning, and generally unappreciated fact that lifespans are not all programmed to be short raises many interesting possibilities. I will highlight some interesting examples from nature in the following postings. View in LinkedIn

Radical Kenya's plastic bag ban: minor teething problems to be solved by cheap biodegradables. View in LinkedIn

Party leaders urge Theresa May to act on childhood obesity https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/25/party-leaders-urge-theresa-may-to-act-on-childhood-obesity?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other View in LinkedIn

THE AND ENERGY COST. "Finding mates requires time and energy. Finally, recombination may break down existing genetic associations generated by natural selection, leading to “recombination load.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.1516/full View in LinkedIn

CONTRARIAN VIEW. "Human life histories, as compared to those of other primates and mammals, have at least four distinctive characteristics: an exceptionally long lifespan, an extended period of juvenile dependence, support of reproduction by older post-reproductive individuals, and male support of reproduction through the provisioning of females and their offspring." A fascinating read. https://lnkd.in/dDxfUbh View in LinkedIn