6 replies to this topic

[EmbraceUnity]

http://hosted.ap.org...EMPLATE=DEFAULT

The article mentions the number has been rising rapidly, and that women predominate the centenarian population. Both of these should come as no surprise, but the sheer quantity of Japanese centenarians is impressive.

Japan has 2.5 times more centenarians per 100,000 people than the US. The okinawa region has over 6 times as many centenarians per 100,000 people than the US.

[VictorBjoerk]

actually surprising numbers.I wonder why women do outlive men with such a large gap as 7 years. In sweden it's only 4 years(79 for men 83 for women)
I wonder if it will continue to rise in the next 5-10 years.

[robert122]

http://hosted.ap.org...EMPLATE=DEFAULT

The article mentions the number has been rising rapidly, and that women predominate the centenarian population. Both of these should come as no surprise, but the sheer quantity of Japanese centenarians is impressive.

Japan has 2.5 times more centenarians per 100,000 people than the US. The okinawa region has over 6 times as many centenarians per 100,000 people than the US.

Actually that's NOT true. Based on current numbers, Japan has 36,000 centenarians per 127 million people; the USA (with 2.39 times the population) at 304 million with 95,000 centenarians (2.64 times as many). The US actually has a HIGHER rate of centenarians overall.

These news stories just make up US data, or use US data from 20 years ago...NOT comparable.

And we see the US currently has 7 out of the 10 oldest verified living persons in the world.

Yes, Okinawa has the highest rate of any 1-million plus political division, but Japan's overall numbers are not YET that impressive. I expect that to change within a decade, though.

[Mind]

The ranks of centenarians growing rapidly in many areas of the world.

THIS year, the number of pensioners in the UK exceeded the number of minors for the first time in history. That's remarkable in its own right, but the real "population explosion" has been among the oldest of the old - the centenarians. In fact, this is the fastest-growing demographic in much of the developed world. In the UK, their numbers have increased by a factor of 60 since the early 20th century. And their ranks are set to swell even further, thanks to the ageing baby-boomer generation: by 2030 there will be about a million worldwide.

These trends raise social, ethical and economic dilemmas. Are medical advances artificially prolonging life with little regard for the quality of that life? Old age brings an increased risk of chronic disease, disability and dementia, and if growing numbers of elderly people become dependent on state or familial support, society faces skyrocketing costs and commitments. This is the dark cloud outside the silver lining of increasing longevity. Yet researchers who study the oldest old have made a surprising discovery that presents a less bleak vision of the future than many anticipate.

"Are medical advances artificially prolonging life with little regard for the quality of that life?" No. How did this writer even come up with this question? As far as I am aware nearly every medical advance is aimed at increasing the quality of life. Hello!?!

[Mortuorum]

The ranks of centenarians growing rapidly in many areas of the world.

THIS year, the number of pensioners in the UK exceeded the number of minors for the first time in history. That's remarkable in its own right, but the real "population explosion" has been among the oldest of the old - the centenarians. In fact, this is the fastest-growing demographic in much of the developed world. In the UK, their numbers have increased by a factor of 60 since the early 20th century. And their ranks are set to swell even further, thanks to the ageing baby-boomer generation: by 2030 there will be about a million worldwide.

These trends raise social, ethical and economic dilemmas. Are medical advances artificially prolonging life with little regard for the quality of that life? Old age brings an increased risk of chronic disease, disability and dementia, and if growing numbers of elderly people become dependent on state or familial support, society faces skyrocketing costs and commitments. This is the dark cloud outside the silver lining of increasing longevity. Yet researchers who study the oldest old have made a surprising discovery that presents a less bleak vision of the future than many anticipate.

"Are medical advances artificially prolonging life with little regard for the quality of that life?" No. How did this writer even come up with this question? As far as I am aware nearly every medical advance is aimed at increasing the quality of life. Hello!?!

No, I think I disagree with your sentiment as expressed and as I am interpreting it in context here, Mind.

In many instances, and this occurs with distressing frequency in recent decades, particularly regarding western medicine, maintaining survival rates and mollifying the symptomatic responses of chronic disease without really understanding properly nor addressing the root causal factors (as is the case with the vast majority of western medicine concerning treatment protocols for many chronic, degenerative pathologies) is not necessarily tantamount in any way, shape, or form to an improvement within the "quality" of said "life", survival rates of duration may often perhaps be elongated, but the patient does not necessarily experience an improved quality of existence (unless of course you are of the school of thought wherein you feel that survival itself, no matter what the milieu or modality upon which it exists, is a manifestation of a high quality of existence or an improvement simply because it happens to be temporarily circumventing the onset of death?) in my opinion. I would much rather die or seek an approach of treatment modality more "eastern" or alternative based upon strengthening the system rather than weakening it further than to simply have a few extra years of an existence wherein I was suffering the abjectly miserable side-effects of toxic drugs, dubiously efficacious treatment therapeutic interventions with caustic, harrowing side-effects, limitations of mobility/confinement, incurring more debt upon myself or loved ones, etc. So, no, I do not feel as though something simply being $$promoted$$ with the moniker of a medical advancement is not necessarily equal to an improvement upon the quality of life.

Figuratively speaking, I personally would rather, in the end, live twenty fulfilled years than a hundred miserable, suffering ones, always............

Edited by Mortuorum, 21 September 2009 - 08:02 PM.

[Mind]

Figuratively speaking, I personally would rather, in the end, live twenty fulfilled years than a hundred miserable, suffering ones, always............

Yes, me too. However, the vast majority of researchers and medical professionals are striving for better outcomes and less suffering. I have met some doctors in the past who might have been incompetent but none that deliberately wanted to prolong suffering. Getting to root causes and system-level approaches for diseases are fine, and in some cases superior, but they won't cure aging. We will need advanced technology for that.

[Mortuorum]

Figuratively speaking, I personally would rather, in the end, live twenty fulfilled years than a hundred miserable, suffering ones, always............

Yes, me too. However, the vast majority of researchers and medical professionals are striving for better outcomes and less suffering. I have met some doctors in the past who might have been incompetent but none that deliberately wanted to prolong suffering. Getting to root causes and system-level approaches for diseases are fine, and in some cases superior, but they won't cure aging. We will need advanced technology for that.

Science, particularly medical science, exists now in diametric opposition to its' original intentions. It has been usurped by corporations and their profit interests and this vastly supersedes any interest whatsoever regarding "improving" upon or even extending a high caliber of human existence. This is actually antithetical to corporate agenda directives. Science has, over the last century, evolved and been sculpted into a tool and a servant of corporate interests.

Yes, medicine is though now, sadly, first and foremost and has become, largely, a business and much erudition and its' academia, is structurally defined by pharmaceutical corporate interests, western education, in general, has become standardized, intentionally so, unfortunately, with not the best of intentions, by wealthy industrialists, throughout the last century, this has had a huge impact upon the shaping of minds, very good minds, ones with morals, values, ethics, burning and passionate desires to prolong life and improve it, to decrease the existence of suffering. Unfortunately, the very foundations of what defines and comprises their perspective of intellect and knowledge, their awareness of "science", has been wrought, twisted, and manipulated unethically by interests that are not ultimately first and foremost fixated upon really improving the quality of life through its prolongation free from the indentured servitude to a health care and pharmaceutical industry that has become a huge corporate monstrosity that is dependent largely upon the manifestation of pathology and pathological states in order to thrive, the eradication of disease is hardly in its' interest, life extension is its' worst enemy. There are a variety of very obvious, logical reasons why governments would not even want people living much longer (and within a high caliber of disease-free, mental/cognitive, and physical functionality) than the current medians, it would pose a plethora of threats to its existence on many levels and not the opposite.

Medicine has become indistinct from an actual science or a scientific process, clinicians are more molded as technicians and not scientists with scientific skills of critical analysis and with mindsets shaped towards the attainment of real progress at any cost even if it means subverting the prosperity of a diseased, ethically dubious model of therapeutic design and corporate profit-making. Physicians are largely just technicians whose minds are shaped and ultimately limited by a paradigm of education with questionable ultimate objectives, directives, formulated questionably as well or even just often with the best of intentions but myopically.

Little Corporate profit lies within extending human life beyond a hundred years in a high state of existence modality and especially not without their needed dependencies upon pharmaceuticals and costly treatment implementations. Most research and data perpetrated with muscular, assertive funding and even often quoted here and accepted as factual on this forum, in general, is now corporate industry funded and dominated (and not simply medical and pharmaceutical research, research connecting food consumption to disease and dietary precepts, etc. is also corporate interest influenced and funded, pharmaceutical and medical industries profit largely from disease so why should they not ultimately advocate the foods most conducive to cumulative chronic disease manifestation, even very possibly to the degree of propagating research data indicating health benefits wherein they don't exist and actually the opposite is real, these industries can and do cooperate, symbiotically, and not even necessarily consciously but more so than one might at first conceive, and techniques of reverse psychological manipulation and rabid-wolf false-science in respectable veneer and deceptive sheep's laboratory hospital clinician white are hardly unheard of and make the most logical sense in terms of corporate functioning and collated, collective corporate interests, is it not inconceivable that multi-billion dollar industries are in bed with one another?) and they are not going to do so with the intention of self-destructive end results regardless of morality or ethics. Imagine a scenario wherein a means of therapeutic, preventive, wellness-inducing, life elongating drug and/or lifestyle "miracle" were happened upon through corporate interest conducted research. Would it then be ethical for them to make this type of miracle, life-extending, high quality of existence assuring treatment, drug, supplement, means, etc. available only to a select few that could $$afford$$ its' inevitable high price tag, which would be the only logical justification for a corporation to unleash such an enterprise upon the world? Think of the moral outrage then, they could never get away with it! I am not implying that western medicine is some uniformly "evil" endeavor, physicians are victims of their knowledge foundations just as much as their "lay" patients are and they are very often people with the best hearts imaginable, their erudition and its myriad myopia are a testament to this victimization though, they perpetrate and propagate what they are taught to, with the best of intentions, however questionable and flawed they might possibly, ultimately may be. I think what is unfortunate is how their very limited perspectives and knowledge is often virtually deified by the lay populace, particularly in situations involving the crisis of their manifest mortality, being faced with serious illness and death wherein they acquiesce in complete subservience to the well-meaning limitations of their physicians and the dubious foundations upon which their knowledge and treatment modalities lie and this is often the resultant decision that costs them their lives...........


Sorry, maybe this is all off the mark of the initial post (and I do NOT want to provoke a debate at all....lol...), but perhaps not, this subject is also far too complex for simplistic, unduly summary forum postings as well, books are written about it and substantive articles by brilliant minds but the mass media has little interest even within the few, if any, realms left that it might not be controlled again by corporate interests and and said agendas of perspective.

Edited by Mortuorum, 21 September 2009 - 09:48 PM.