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The most suprising two paragraphs so far today
“How tall your parents are compared to the average height explains 80 to 90 percent of how tall you are compared to the average person,” Dr. Vaupel said. But “only 3 percent of how long you live compared to the average person can be explained by how long your parents lived.”
“You really learn very little about your own life span from your parents’ life spans,” Dr. Vaupel said. “That’s what the evidence shows. Even twins, identical twins, die at different times.” On average, he said, more than 10 years apart.
Here is the full story, which is interesting throughout. But of course the day is young, and I haven't seen Bryan, Robin [Hanson], and Alex yet...
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 31, 2006 at 08:15 AM in Science | Permalink
Comments
Interesting and counter-intuitive: thank you.
Posted by: dearieme at Aug 31, 2006 9:32:25 AM
Depending on your family background, this article is either very good news or very bad news.
Posted by: prosa at Aug 31, 2006 10:44:50 AM
I don't think it's particularly counter-intuitive. Many diseases or conditions may be genetic, but no two lifestyles are the same.
Posted by: Swimmy at Aug 31, 2006 10:46:12 AM
In the article, the say that life span is 3% inheritable, and body weight is 70% inheritable. Yet it is commonly assumed that weight has a large effect on many diseases, and thus on lifespan.
Posted by: Stefano at Aug 31, 2006 10:51:54 AM
I should add: because of the advances of medical technology over generational periods, even the impact of genetic conditions (or even learned negative habits) should be minimized.
Posted by: Swimmy at Aug 31, 2006 10:52:44 AM
I've always assumed (without actually, you know, testing it) that early death is more or less a Poisson process: you're waiting around for something to kill you. And that the mean's been increasing, thanks to modern medicine and hygiene.
I'm not sure anyone has a good model for late death, though.
Posted by: jim at Aug 31, 2006 2:30:03 PM
Here is a very interesting presentation on the heritability of lifespan:
http://longevity-science.org/Gavrilova-Australia.ppt
The 3% figure seems way out of line; this presentation cites six different studies that are all around 10-30%. However, it gets much more interesting than that. Unlike most things that are influenced by genetics, the effect of genetics on lifespan is non-linear. Essentially, unusually long lifespans are heritable, but unusually short ones, not so much.
Posted by: Tony at Aug 31, 2006 3:16:22 PM
That sounds more intuitive, Tony.
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