Why life begins at 90

"In 1939, British statisticians Major Greenwood and J. O. Irwin published a little-noticed article in the journal Human Biology. Not only was 1939 a bad year for making scientific history, their article contained some fearsome mathematics, guaranteed to scare away most biologists and doctors.

The article also contained a profoundly unexpected discovery. Greenwood and Irwin were studying mortality figures for women aged 93 and over. They expected to see the death rate rising with age, as it does throughout adult life. But they did not. Instead, between 93 and 100 years of age the acceleration in death rates came to a screeching stop. Little old ladies aged 99 were no more likely to die than those aged 93.

Even the authors were dismayed. "At first sight this must seem a preposterous speculation," they wrote. After all, like every other respectable biologist of the time, they assumed that "decay must surely continue".

But what if it doesn't? What if ageing stops? And if it stops very late in our lives, is there any way we can make it stop earlier, when we are in better health?"
via New Scientist / continue reading