So You Want To Live Past 100?
Don’t trust the hucksters
The common human desire to stretch out our time and “cheat” death for as long as possible has been rewarded during the past century by the unprecedented increase in life expectancy delivered by modern medical science and public health. A great deal of the approximately 30 year increase in life expectancy seen over the course of the 20th century was due to the dramatic decrease in infant and early childhood mortality, but adults also saw death delayed. Today, life extension “experts” promise all sorts of implausible results, with the only guarantee of course being their own profit. The basic information about a healthy life-style in terms of prudent diet, exercise, weight control and avoidance of carcinogenic and cardiovascular poisons like alcohol, tobacco and drugs is readily available for the motivated, but there is no evidence of any special benefit obtainable at any price beyond this. In fact, now there is scientific evidence that we are hitting a ceiling on human longevity—and that even with strict adherence to the prescriptions above, there is no chance of meaningful life extension from the scientific and medical marvels already in hand. The following article from Nature Aging leveraged population demographic metrics from (Australia, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, US, and Hong Kong) from 1990 through 2019, and found the previous century’s increase in human longevity very rapidly decelerating. This time frame, of course, removed any setbacks from the recent pandemic. The likely conclusion is that we have pretty much maxed out our potential, barring some extraordinary scientific advance that actually slows the aging process at the molecular level. The analysis of these researchers suggests that in the most favorable of circumstances survival to 100 is unlikely for more than 15% of females and 5% of males. That excess cash you are spending on supplements and special berries from the Amazon would be better spent on some relaxation time, or maybe lottery tickets.
Implausibility of radical life extension in humans in the twenty-first century | Nature Aging
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-024-00702-3
Last year the Japanese government approved a new mRNA COVID vaccine with a novel twist—the RNA which gets absorbed into your cells is self replicating in the cytoplasm of the cells, and triggers production of the SARS2-Cov19 viral Spike protein for a more prolonged time. The claim is that continued production of the Spike antigen will lead to more durable antibody levels, and that smaller initial doses of mRNA are beneficial from side effect profile. Another difference is that this vaccine uses an Alpha virus from a family of viruses which cause encephalitis as a vector to deliver the mRNA, rather than the nano-lipid molecules of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The Alpha virus has been depleted of some genetic material so it is not (as far as they know from premarket short term testing) pathogenic. As far as I can tell the studies used as the basis for approving this vaccine showed efficacy directly in line with the existing COVID mRNA vaccines, which now at least have close to 5 years of long term mass use for evaluating safety issues and rare long term side effects. This self replication srRNA technology comes at a time when there are readily available vaccines in unlimited supply, yet it’s testing and approval process followed the unusual, rapid path necessitated by the crisis of the early pandemic. If you ask me, this is an unwise decision purely motivated by a desire to circumvent the patents of other companies, and begin coining money as quickly as possible. Reports from Japan suggest that a very significant portion of the generally quite compliant population is having none of this, and large scale opposition has surfaced, dramatically reducing medical institutions ordering of the vaccine. The company marketing this has responded by initiating court proceedings against individuals publicly raising concerns about the safety of the vaccine. It’s the: he said, she said of vaccine disinformation; one man’s lie is another man’s legitimate concern, and the profit motive trumps all.
https://www.contagionlive.com/view/japan-approves-updated-self-amplifying-mrna-covid-19-vaccine
I have asked the question before, “How Safe is the Food Supply”, and it’s time to revisit that question. You are probably aware of the huge recall of Boars Head meat products because of listeria contamination. The recent tally is 59 cases identified in 19 states, with 59 hospitalizations and 10 deaths. That of course implies there were many more cases, because only those sick enough to be hospitalized were correctly identified. Listeria is a bacteria that loves to grow in cold conditions (think deli case in this case) and can cause severe disseminated disease, often with meningitis, in the immunocompromised, the elderly and in pregnant women, where it often causes fetal infection and demise. It is only fairly recently recognized that listeria can be a cause of self limiting gastroenteritis in normal people. I am quite confident that many more people were infected, but their mild illness was never diagnosed as due to listeria, since it is not typical diagnostic practice to look for this bug (which required special laboratory processing) in non-septic gastroenteritis cases. Just as cases from the Boars Head factory contamination have finally petered out, the FDA informs us that a giant meat and poultry supplier, BrucePac, has been ordered to recall 10 million pounds of ready to eat meat and chicken. This action resulted from multiple lots of BrucePac products testing positive for listeria, and not from any identified sick people. However the situation is further complicated by the fact that other sellers repackage BrucePac products with their own lot numbers and expiration dates; so the logistics of tracking and recalling 10 million pounds of meat before it gets to consumers is daunting. It is reasonable to expect further cases of severe listeria infection from this situation.
One of the suggestions from the FDA during the Boars Head episode was to heat your meat products to an internal temperature of 165 F. I don’t know if you have ever tried to melt liverwurst in a fry pan, or ruin a pound of nice rare deli roast beef on the stove top—but that advice seems likely to have originated in the same government department which in the aftermath of hurricane Helene shipped 3 pallets of electric chainsaws to a town in North Carolina with no functioning electric grid. The letters of the different agencies may be different, but sometimes the actions and decisions are strikingly similar.
This past week the FDA approved the first combination home testing kit for both COVID and Influenza to have been subjected to the usual historic, rigorous testing procedures before approval. There have been combination kits on the market previously, but they were approved under the emergency use authorization pathway of the pandemic, and have often been found to be very inaccurate. Why it has taken this long to rigorously test and approve a home kit through standard FDA channels, is hard to understand. These kits, when accurate, are extremely useful during the viral respiratory season, and can routinely prevent a trip to the doctor’s office with reduction in cost, inconvenience (for doctor and patient), and avoidance of exposing other potentially vulnerable folks. Below is a quote from the FDA bulletin regarding the tests accuracy. As you can see false positives are very rare and the sensitivity in detecting true positives is in line with what we expect from the best antigen detection tests. The newly approved test is the Healgen Combination Home test kit for COVID-19 and Influenza A and B.
The test is for use by individuals 14 years or older taking and testing their own sample, or individuals 2 years and older with a sample taken and tested by an adult. The FDA reviewed data from a study of individuals with signs and symptoms of COVID-19 and influenza, which showed that this test correctly identified 99% of negative and 92% of positive SARS-CoV-2 samples, 99.9% of negative Flu A and B samples, and 92.5% and 90.5% of positive Flu A and Flu B samples, respectively.
Most of you probably don’t pick travel destinations based on the local virus population, but you might want to take the following information under consideration if you are pregnant. A bug with the catchy name of Oropouche Virus has been generally a fairly uncommon infection in South America for years since it was first discovered in 1955. It is spread by biting midges, and for the most part causes a febrile illness resembling several of the other insect transmitted diseases such as Zika, Chickungunya or Dengue. Occasional people do get clinical brain infection, meningitis or encephalitis, but for the most part the infection is relatively moderate and self limiting. This virus is capable of reassortment of large sections of its genome, like Influenza, and starting early this year an explosive epidemic of Oropouche disease has occurred in the Amazon region of Brazil, caused by a novel strain of this virus representing a combination of previous variants. Increased numbers of cases caused by this strain are now being seen in Columbia, other South American countries and the Caribbean, especially Cuba—with cases identified in returning American tourists. Why worry with so much else on the horizon? The impending end of Democracy, the certain incineration of the world, either by nuclear war, or billionaires and celebrities flying on private jets to alert us to the tragedy. With the huge increase in cases it now is becoming clear that this virus causes fetal infection, which can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth or severe congenital abnormalities like extreme microcephaly. This is a developing story (Zika 2.0?), but worth thinking about if planning a trip and you are pregnant.
Biting Midge—also known as No-see-ums
The Election Season is in hyperdrive now; personally I can’t wait for the reassuring, heartwarming return of TV advertisements from personal injury lawyers. With respect to the government agencies with various letter appellations, we learned today that the Afghan national, who was arrested for plotting a terror attack on election day, was working for the CIA in Afghanistan. Some of that reassuring vetting we have been told about I’m guessing. I have developed what I consider an important advance in Political Science (the use of the word Science here has always amused me). We tend to rate politicians on a one dimensional scale, sic, Left Wing, Right Wing, Centrist. I think for more accurate characterization we need to locate these characters in three dimensions. I propose adding initially a second dimension I would label the Insanity Axis. That applies to the policies they have espoused, not whether they regularly attended parties sponsored by Diddy. This one will be hard to accurately fix, since you will reflexively place candidates of your own political persuasion at zero, and candidates from the other party at 100, so I recommend enlisting your grandmother for advice. The third political dimension I see is the Consistency Axis—after all if you vote for Donald Trump you don’t want him to suddenly start acting like AOC after winning office, and conversely if you vote for Kamala you don’t want her to start enacting Trump’s policies as soon as she’s ensconced in the Oval Office. If the information here is useful and interesting, then pound the like button, and have a great weekend.
Another informative and entertaining read!
You are great Jeff!! Most informative and amusing!!