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From:	Dr. Doug Graham (DrGraham.vegsource.com)
Subject:	Re: What about longevity?
Date:	June 25, 2012 at 4:18 am PST

In Reply to: Re: What about longevity? posted by Christopher Paulin on June 24, 2012 at 3:34 pm:

Longevity is mostly a matter of hygiene. When we cleaned up the streets by improving our sewage disposal methods, longevity increased. When we implemented child labor laws, longevity increased. When doctors started washing their hands, longevity increased. When cars were designed more safely, longevity increased.
But the big increases in longevity have all been on paper, created by changing the standards by which longevity was measured.

During the course of the 20th century, three distinct changes were made in the way we measure longevity. In 1900, all live births were recorded and averaged into the statistics, even if the child only lived for a day. Over the decades this policy changed, and the child had to live first for a year, then five, and now to ten, before being averaged into the stats. Take the bottom 15% out of any stat range and you skew the results dramatically.

If you want a true sense of our longevity, read obituaries for the last 250 years. You'll see that we're not living longer today.

Yes, the next generation of 811ers will be setting a new standard in human potential, I believe. Too bad they'll have to do it on such a polluted earth.

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