When I am at a dinner table, I love to ask everybody, 'How long do you think our species might last?' I've read that the average age of a species, of any species, is about two million years. Is it possible we can have an average life span as a species? And do you picture us two million years more or a million and a half years, or 5,000?
If football is your passion in life and you would rather play football for 20 years and have a shortened life span, that's your choice.
The wear time on clothing for plus-sized women is half the life span of a straight-sized woman's clothing. Straight-sized women's bras can last them three, six months? Our bras don't last as long as a straight-sized woman's bras normally do because we have more movement; we have more weight.
I had two family members involved in World War I: two great-uncles. One of them is on a memorial in France. And the other was a trench runner who survived the war. The average life span of a trench runner was 36 hours, but he survived the whole war.
The key to the future in an aging society is not found in increasing just our life span; we need to increase our health span at the same time.
A lot of people say when you get a short life span you want to go out and do all of this crazy stuff like go bungee jumping and travel to exotic places. But you just want to live.
It's possible that we could change a human gene and double our life span. I don't know if that's true, but we can't rule that out.
Generally, older people in their fifties, sixties, and seventies are running most countries and are CEOs of corporations. Which isn't to say there aren't entrepreneurs, but if the young were better in every respect, there'd be no reason for the old. Our life span reflects our particular life strategy.
In the early '90s, we discovered mutations that could double the normal life span of worms.
Although we take it for granted, sanitation is a physical measure that has probably done more to increase human life span than any kind of drug or surgery.
