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This talk is going
to be about ageing.
It's one of those
characteristics
where understanding
how it has evolved
is really key to thinking
about its mechanisms.
This is a case where
evolutionary biology really
is directly relevant
to a medical problem,
and there are some extremely
pressing reasons for
taking an interest
in ageing right now.
One of them is the
fairly obvious one,
that mortality rates have
shown a dramatic decline
in industrialised
societies worldwide.
This is a trend that started in
about the middle of the 19th century
and has continued unabated
to the present day.
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This slide from the work of
Jim Vaupel and his colleagues
shows some examples of these.
These are mortality
rates for women
between the ages of 80 and 89,
between the years 1950 and 1995
in various industrialised
societies.
You can see that over
that time period,
there has been a more
or less linear decrease
in death rates.
They've more than halved
over that period of time.
This is a trend that
is continuing now.
What the demographers tell us
is that there's
absolutely no sign
that this decrease in mortality
rates is slowing down.
We cannot yet see what
any intrinsic limit to
human lifespan is
actually going to be.
There doesn't at
the moment seem to
be an approaching wall of death
at an age after which human
longevity is impossible.
The current world record holder
is an extremely
interesting person.
