Free Republic

In August, Stockton passed a tough anti-smoking ordinance that prohibits smoking within 20 feet of the entrance to any public building — and not just government buildings. This is a step Modesto would be wise to follow, and we quickly should pass the same kind of anti-smoking ordinance. I decided to visit our local mall. It would have been nice to have been able to enter the mall without having to run the gantlet of large groups of people exhaling carcinogenic toxic gas into the air. Virtually all of them were within 20 feet of the door. Let's face this...

VATICAN CITY Apr 20, 2005 — Pope Benedict XVI himself predicted a "short reign" in comments to cardinals just after his election, and his brother said Wednesday he was worried about the stress the job would put on the 78-year-old pontiff. While there are no indications that Benedict currently suffers from any serious or chronic medical problems, there have been ailments in the past including a 1991 hemorrhagic stroke that raise questions about how long his pontificate will last. The Vatican refused to comment Wednesday on Benedict's health, citing his privacy. The Vatican never officially confirmed Pope John Paul II...

Controversial theorist Aubrey de Grey insists that we are within reach of an engineered cure for aging. Are you prepared to live forever? On this glorious spring day in Cambridge, England, the heraldic flags are flying from the stone towers, and I feel like I could be in the 17th century—or, as I pop into the Eagle Pub to meet University of Cambridge longevity theorist Aubrey de Grey, the 1950s. It was in this pub, after all, that James Watson and Francis Crick met regularly for lunch while they were divining the structure of DNA and where, in February 1953,...

Life expectancy is increasing in the developed world. But Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey believes it will soon extend dramatically to 1,000. Here, he explains why. Ageing is a physical phenomenon happening to our bodies, so at some point in the future, as medicine becomes more and more powerful, we will inevitably be able to address ageing just as effectively as we address many diseases today. I claim that we are close to that point because of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project to prevent and cure ageing. It is not just an idea: it's a very...

Dietary restriction is known to increase lifespan in organisms ranging from yeast to mammals, presumably, in the words of Mair et al. (2003), "by slowing the accumulation of aging-related damage."  In stark contrast, however, their studies of Drosophila (the common fruit fly) indicate that "dietary restriction extends lifespan entirely by reducing the short-term risk of death."  So powerful is this phenomenon, in fact, they report that only "two days after the application of dietary restriction at any age for the first time, previously fully fed flies are no more likely to die than flies of the same age that have...

ATLANTA - U.S. infant mortality has climbed for the first time in more than four decades, in part because older women are putting off motherhood and then having multiple babies via fertility drugs, the government said Wednesday. At the same time, U.S. life expectancy reached an all-time high of 77.4 years in 2002, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Life expectancy in 2001 was 77.2 years. The nation's infant mortality rate climbed from 6.8 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2001 to 7.0 deaths per 1,000 in 2002. The last time the rate rose was in 1958. "We...

LONDON: To live longer, choose the right degree course. Students of science or engineering have the best chance of living longer, while arts or law students are more likely to have a shorter life, according to research published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. A survey of mortality rates found arts students were 60 per cent more likely to die prematurely than their contemporaries in the sciences. It said that medical students ran the highest risk of succumbing to an alcohol-related death. The research was based on the death rates of over 8,000 male students aged between...

The dwarf mouse, otherwise known as GHR-KO 11C, died Jan. 8 after living the equivalent of 180 to 200 human years, said Andrzej Bartke, a physiologist who worked with the mouse.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As Americans feasted on plates of Thanksgiving turkey Thursday, U.S. scientists reported they have made progress in understanding how eating less leads to longer life. Studies in yeast, rodents and other organisms have found that drastically cutting calories extends life span, and researchers are striving to find out how that happens. The hope is that human drugs may be developed to mimic that effect, without having to eat less. In a report in Friday's edition of the journal Science, researchers said studies with fruit flies, which have many genes similar to mammals, showed that an enzyme called...

In Westernized societies, women tend to outlive men. The established explanation for this inequality is that males undertake more risky behavior than females do and, as a result, perish prematurely. But new research published today in the journal Science suggests that parasites could be at least partially responsible. Sarah L. Moore and Kenneth Wilson of the University of Stirling analyzed parasitic infections in 355 nonhuman mammal species and found that males were more likely than females to succumb to parasites. What causes this small but significant increase remains unclear. With their generally larger size, males may just make more attractive...

Study Shows Moms' Lives Shortened by Sons Men who thought giving their moms flowers for Mother's Day was enough to show their appreciation might have another think coming. According to a report published in the current issue of the journal Science, having boys actually shortened the life span of mothers in preindustrial times. Raising daughters, in contrast, had a positive effect on a woman's longevity. Samuli Helle of the University of Turku in Finland and his colleagues analyzed church records from 1640 to 1870 to investigate how total family size and the number of children produced affected the longevity of...