We Live Too Short and Die Too Long

This is a book about aging. It will challenge everything you ever thought about the subject.
 
First, We Live Too Short and Die Too Long will challenge the boundaries you probably place on the human life span. Exactly how long do you expect to live? The life insurance industry bets that for most of us it will be 75 years. But you’re an optimist, right? So you’ll plan on beating the odds and reaching your nineties. I contend, as do other scientists who have studied the dynamics of human life, that both of those estimates are far short. Several lines of evidence clearly place the human life span at a remarkable 120 years.
 
I will detail my case in the chapters that follow; but for now, the most convincing facts may be those which are the most simple. Newspapers in Oakland, California, recently reported the death of local resident Arthur Reed, age 124. In Asan, Japan, Shigechiyo Isumi died on February 21, 1986, in his 121st year. Such longevity provides an inescapable inference—what is possible for one is possible for others.
 
That’s quite a leap from the time of the first Caesar, when human life expectancy was 25 years; or from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the average American lived to the age of 49. Traditionally, this increase in life span has been explained by factors such as decreased infant mortality, eradication of communicable disease, and improvements in both nutrition and public hygiene. These most certainly are significant developments, but they only skirt the periphery of a more fundamental fact. We live longer because we are designed to live longer. And when we control anomalies such as disease, trauma, behavioral maladaptation, and self-destruction, the natural order of our lives prevails.