On Wed, 13 Aug 1997, Jean-Louis Tu wrote:
> BTW, you have seen the picture of G. C. Burger, after 33 years raw:
> his skin looks exactly as the skin of a man of his age [and my uncle,
> who eats 90% cooked and has the same age, has a smoother skin]. I can
> hear your argument coming "but at the 10th generation..."; however,
> if the 10th generation instincto lived 1000 years, I would expect SOME
> improvement for someone who has practiced 33 years!

Well, maybe Burger [skin] will look like a "33" for the remaining 967
years of his life then...

Heck, maybe it'll look like a "200" for the [then] remaining 800 years of
his life...

Hmmm.. while I'm at it, why not make it a "20" when he's 999 and a year
away from his death?  <Hey! who says instinctos' skin doesn't get
"better" with time?>

> Maybe eating raw can help to limit cell division, because, as you
> are healthier, and your organs, circulation, etc function correctly,
> there is no need for extra effort from the cells, there is no extra
> damage. But on the other hand, there have been many healthy people
> living on earth until late age, who nevertheless died before 120.

Obviously, they weren't healthy enough then..

> Maybe [and that's my personal comment] calorie restriction can increase
> maximum lifespan, because as metabolism slows down, cells divide less
> quickly. Or, perhaps, as the body contains less cells (emaciation),
> there are less cells to renew per unit of time. But all of that
> can only have a limited effect, far from a tenfold multiplication.

Very interesting "personal comment."

> Nature doesn't care about keeping you alive once you have reproduced
> and raised your children. On the evolutionary point of view, living
> 120 or 1200 years don't make any difference. I admit that it's not
> a powerful argument, though.

I admit so too.

> There is a great deal of uncertainty about that. The figures that
> Ward Nicholson gave were very different.
> I think, as I mentioned in a previous post, that observing current
> hunter-gatherer societies can give a good idea on the subject. And
> it is clear that no human population in the world has a life
> expectancy as high as in industrialized countries.

Hey! - you didn't say "not a powerful argument!"

>
> As for animals, no mammal I know lives more than about 1 century.
> If we consider than the length of life is proportional to the period
> prior to adulthood (which is 18 years for humans), and we observe
> chimpanzees and other close apes, we see that humans cannot expect much
> more than 120 years.

That's a great little equation, but so is Drake's.