This just in -- U.S. Life Expectancy Hits All-Time High

In one respect this is very good news indeed, but stay tuned.

U.S. Life Expectancy Hits All-Time High

By MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press Writer

ATLANTA - U.S. life expectancy has hit another all-time high _ 77.6 years _ and deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke continue to drop, the government reported Thursday.

To put this in the shortest and sweetest terms, this is exactly the result of Rejuvenation Engineering. However, due to human nature there is a catch.

Still, the march of medical progress has taken a worrisome turn: Half of Americans in the 55-to-64 age group _ including the oldest of the baby boomers _ have high blood pressure, and two in five are obese. That means they are in worse shape in some respects than Americans born a decade earlier were when they were that age.

The health of this large group of the near-elderly is of major concern to American taxpayers, because they are now becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security.

"What happens to this group is very important because it's going to affect every other group," said Amy Bernstein of the National Center for Health Statistics, which put out the new report.

As I alluded to above human nature disrupts a very good thing. So the way I see it what must be done is to kick this horse in the flanks with sharper spurs than have been used in the past. By sharper spurs I mean of course a lot more money. All the effort to raise the life expectancy until now has been a happy accident. I mean it is the result of blind efforts to simply fight disease, repair injury and improve the human condition.

As many are catching onto it's time now to take the more direct approach and actively fund research efforts toward the ends of curing aging. Along the way many of these problems spoke of in this article will be addressed directly because different remedies for aging will cross apply. The problems caused by lazy human nature such as obesity and lack of care for optimum health are in part caused by apathy toward life that until now has been seen as short and aging inevitable. These will be addressed by a change in public attitude toward living longer, a change that will come when they realize the goal is possible when it is accomplished in a an animal model such as promoted by the Mprize. When this happens the general public will come onboard in droves.

Please read the original report available here. It goes on to talk about differences in generations ten years apart, those born in the 30's compared to those born in the 40's, the so called baby boomers. The inference in the entire report is that Social Security and Medicare will be strained by people living longer so efforts are being made to encourage better health to assuage the cost.

As those in the Life Extension movement know quite well, the best answer to fixing the woes of Social Security and Medicare are to cure aging, period. For one, people won't need to retire if they are youthful for longer or rejuvenated to restored youthful health. They will then have the time and mental maturity to better handle finances and place themselves in positions of safer long term compound interest investment that allow them to not need government or even industry retirement pension plans.

If you like these ideas and like the possibility to live to see many generations of grand children and the wonders that a vastly more technical and connected world may offer in the future, then please by all means possible step up and help us fund the effort to first garner wider public support for Life Extension via the animal model I spoke of above. Currently the Methuselah Mouse Prize is in my mind the best prospect for this. You may click the mouse logo in the upper right of my blog to go directly to the donation page. Do consider a long term commitment that cost merely the same as a cup of coffee a day, consider joining The Three Hundred a group of highly motivated forward thinking smart people pioneering a brighter path for us all.