X-Message-Number: 27051
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 08:21:50 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: msgs by Merel, Price, Stodolsky

Some comments on msgs by Merel, Price, and Stodolsky:

For Peter Merel:
In a sense I've answered your message. I will add, though, that your
vision of how people conducted themselves after WWII and at other
such times is simply false. The end of WWII was an opportunity to
get even with the other side for all the things they had done to
OUR side.

For Michael Price:
I will try to look at your previous message, but if you sent it to
me privately I would be grateful. Frankly, any drug which gave 
any animal a lifespan table like exp(-T) would qualify as a drug
which did cause immortality --- assuming of course that the mortality
curve was consistently greater than that of animals not given the
drug. I would be very surprised indeed if I had not myself heard
of such a drug already. 

My reliance on one particular mathematical curve as a test of 
immortality comes from my understanding of the statistics of deaths.
If the deathrate of a group of people did not increase as they got
older, then they would follow the exp(-T) curve; it is the lifespan
curve for a population which dies at a constant rate independent of
age. And it's not enough that they follow exp(-T) for longer than
many before their deathrate increases. It's whatever causes them
to show a greater deathrate than exp(-T) that constitutes their
aging.

For David Stodolsky:
Statistics about death rates and other diseases tell us no more
than that something is going wrong. That could be some kind of
public "immorality" toward the poor, or simply that one segment
of the population had adopted better medicine than another. It's
interesting here that statistics for a small nation such as
Denmark don't spread as much as those for much larger nations ---
one very simple explanation is that different groups in the US,
China, or Russia differ in their belief in just how good Western
medicine may be, or for that matter, belief in the common 
customs of the Middle Class in their society. I will add that
in countries such as the US, the problem of poverty turns out
to be much more complex than anything treated by some simple
change in policy.

            Best wishes and long long life to all,

                Thomas Donaldson

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