- People have been really
consumed with the idea of immortality and aging
for a very long time. But the question is: Is a longer life truly a better life? And in some cases, perhaps
yes, but not always. Really, what matters to most
people is quality of life. We know that there is
sometimes a disconnect between this concept what we call 'lifespan' and 'healthspan.' Lifespan is just the
time you've been alive between birth and death. And what scientists think healthspan is is the time you're alive in a more healthy, functioning state- and that's what we're trying to optimize. But sometimes we see a discordance between these two features. One example is this idea of
the health-survival paradox that we see between men and women. On average, women across the
world tend to live longer- by a few years-than men. But women are also more prone to some of the diseases we see with aging. Women tend to spend more time
in age-related disability than men do. And some might argue:
Is that a better life because they've lived longer, or would you actually want,
maybe, a shorter life, but more free from
these diseases of aging? What aging science is about
is not just prolonging life at all cost, but actually
prolonging healthy life. So we think if we intervene
in the aging process itself, that we can delay all of the things that people are scared about
when they think of aging. And that's really the goal. We want to increase quality of life, and maintain that over time. And if that produces a longer life, that's an extra bonus, but
that's not the ultimate goal. In thinking about how we
actually want to intervene in aging and what we want to
be the outcome of our science, this really comes down to this concept that we call 'compression of morbidity.' So the idea is: Can we push the onset of disease and disability far away so that right before you die, you're really compressing
the timing of disease into this really short window? As opposed to having it earlier in life and surviving 20, 30, or 40 years with these diseases of aging. We think this is possible, 'cause you can actually look
at centenarian populations and see that they tend to
compress the timing of disease into the short window right before death- so they're spending the
majority of their life in a much more healthy state. And really what we want to do is figure out how can we have
this possible for everyone so that we can remain
healthy, functioning, and happy with good quality of life for as long as possible. Another really important
thing to keep in mind in terms of longevity science is that we actually don't want to increase what we call 'health disparities.' So right now, even though
the average life expectancy in the population is just
under about 80 years, we wanna make sure that
we can get everyone to a longer and healthier life, and not just have
interventions or therapeutics that help more affluent people get there. How do we make sure that everyone can have as healthy and
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