X-Message-Number: 27749 From: "John de Rivaz" <> Subject: Pensions and life extension. - the iron lungs of gerontology Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 12:42:47 -0000 The debate about pensions and life extension seems to be a non-issue. Once it is demonstrated the healthy lifespan is being extended an appreciable amount, legislation will be introduced to set the pensionable age to a later year. As pointed out some decades ago by Dr Roy Walford, government finances will benefit from this. At present people are supported or are being educated for a period of about 15 to 20 years for a working life of 40 to 50 years. If the working life is extended, then the value for money of the education is also increased. In addition, government expenditure is often quite high for care of the elderly. If the period of senescence remains the same for a longer lifespan, this again is proportionately less. It is quite possible that the 19th century horror stories are correct in that an artificially extended lifespan may end with a much sorter period of senescence before annihilation, giving a double benefit to state funding. Some people may complain at all this saying that the purpose of their working life is to save up for an extended retirement, leaving work in their fifties. To them I would say that there is nothing to stop them using regular plans of savings and investments to amass sufficient capital without calling it "a pension" in so many words. Of course there are tax advantages to retirement plans, but governments also introduce tax incentives for long term savings generally. Rather than engage in pension planning, an independent financial advisor can be consulted to produce a tax efficient investment strategy for a young person if tax efficient pensions savings are no longer available. I think it is important for all people interested in life extension research to make these points wherever possible in forums that discuss the subject. Otherwise people in authority may get it into their heads to ban life extension research for incorrect financial reasons. The reference if anyone wants to quote it is page 17 of < Maximum Lifespan > by Dr Roy L Walford, published in 1983. I have reproduced the text below, and have also placed it (with figure) on http://www.cryonics-europe.org/walford.htm >>> The 90-year-old man of the future will have the physical vigor of a 50-year-old man of today. By substantially prolonging life span, at one swoop we will have greatly postponed the onset of the major diseases of our society. In this age of Degenerative and Man-made diseases, substantial postponement is a kind of "cure"-perhaps a better and cheaper way to cure the killer diseases than trying to pick them off one by one, as medicine is trying to do at present. Maximum life-span extending technologies will give as a bonus the postponement of heart disease, arthritis, cancer, diabetes, all of them. This is the first message of Figure 1.2. The second message concerns the percentage of senile or debilitated people in today's population compared to the percentage expected in a longer-living, 140-year-maximum population. Let's assume for the sake of illustration that everyone in the terminal hatched portions of the two survival curves in Figure. 1.2 is senile. We see (and it is easier to see than to say) that the hatched portion of the longer curve is a smaller fraction of that entire curve than the hatched portion of the shorter curve is of its curve. With prolongation of maximum life span the percentage of persons in the total population who are senile or debilitated actually decreases. Another pleasing and surprising result! *********** The effect of extension of maximum life span. <figure cannot be included> Effect of extension of maximum life span in modern USA and in a hypothetical future USA on the frequency at different ages of the major diseases of aging (P and P) and on the occurrence of feeble or senile oldsters (E and E') in the population. Figure 1.2 ************ This second message has important implications for public policy. The social support system for the aged in the U. S. costs a staggering amount of tax money. The way things are, it will always be increasing. Federal programs for the elderly cost about 112 billion dollars in 1978. Even without inflation they are expected to rise to 350 billion by the early twenty-first century and will total something like a quarter of the nation's entire payroll. The over-65-year-old age group will increase from twenty-three million in 1976 to thirty-two million in the year 2000 and to forty-five million by 2020.11 By the year 2000 there will be seventeen million persons over 75 and five million over 85 years of age in the U. S. alone. These population increases are predicted even without the added prospect of significant life-span extension. Under our present system they add up to more old-age homes, more nursing care, more subsidies, and more money to take care of more sick, senile, and debilitated old people. As an earlier revolutionary, V. I. Lenin, once asked in another desperate context, "What is to be cone?" Our long-term efforts should be for prevention ahead of treatment. The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis faced a similar kind of policy decision in the 1940s and 50s. It could have invested all its resources in perfecting better iron lungs. If that had been the choice, we would now have the best designed, most comfortable iron lungs imaginable, inhabited by thousands of polio victims. Instead of iron lungs, the Foundation invested heavily in basic research on the conquest of polio. It was certainly the wiser decision. My point is that old-age homes and all the vast social support structures continuously accumulating to care for the helpless aged are the iron lungs of gerontology. Improvements in the social, economic, and medical support system for the elderly will merely provide symptomatic relief for an expanding problem. Extending maximum life span will diminish the size of the problem. Having understood the significance of 50 percent and maximum survival, we can use the principles learned from studying the curves to ask questions which will teach us how to use the principles more widely. This is a prototype of scientific method called building understanding upon itself (which is why the whole edifice needs occasionally to be demolished and reconstructed, as by a Lavoisier or a Darwin . . . but that's another story). R.L. Walford, 1982 <<< -- Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy, Nomad .. and more Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=27749