GETTING OLDER?   A MILLION LAUGHS?  APPARENTLY SO.

I get them on my email.  I’m sure you see them too.  Like this one:  Two elderly gents were eating breakfast in a restaurant one morning.  Henry noticed something funny about Arthur’s ear.  “Art, did you know you’ve got a suppository in your left ear?”

            “Hank, I’m glad you saw that thing.  Now I think I know where my hearing aid is.”

Or this one:  Two elderly ladies had been friends for many decades.  Over the years they had shared all kinds of activities and adventures.  Lately, their activities had been limited to a few games of cards every week.  One day, one looked at the other and said, “Now don’t get mad at me…I know we’ve been friends for years…but I just can’t think of your name.  Please tell me what your name is.”

            Her friend glared at her.  For at least three minutes she just stared and glared.  Finally, she blurted, “How soon do you need to know?”

Humor at the expense of second-halfers seems quite common.   Allia Sobel’s book of cartoon humor The Joys of Being 50-plus is but one example of this insulting sophomoric perspective on aging.  While the book appears to target Second Halfers, my reading of these “funnies” made me shudder at the prospect of getting older.  Apparently, author Zobel believes there is nothing to look forward to upon reaching 50 except wrinkles, stupidity, self loathing, and insults from the rest of society.  Thanks for the laughs, but I’m just not laughing.

Another effort at poking fun at the aging process entitled “The Perks of Getting Older” include these screamers:

• You can eat dinner at 4 p.m.
• Your eyes won’t get much worse
• Things you buy now won’t wear out
• You sing along with elevator music
• Your investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off
• Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can’t remember them either.

There was a time when America made fun of blacks and Jews.  There was a time when jokes about dumb wives brought gales of laughter.  Quips and witticisms about people with disabilities—stuttering or wheelchairs—had their day, too.

Apparently the time is not yet nigh that laughing at older people or the aging process no longer seems so funny.  It’s easier to laugh at Alzheimer’s disease, apparently, when only 1 American is 100 is affected by it.  That percent will increase by 350% over the next 30 years, three times the rate of increase of the population at large.  At some point it becomes no laughing matter.

American media—magazines, TV, music, movies, newspapers, radio, and the internet—has been hi-jacked by very young adults.  Because these industries operate on increasingly narrow profit margins, they are the province of 20-somethings just out of school.  From the creative staffs of ad firms, to the producers of radio talk shows, to the editors of magazines, it is hard to find a major decision-maker over 40. 

The result?  The bright, and occasionally caring, young media leaders just don’t get it—no matter how intelligent they might be.  They don’t have a clue what aging really is about.  The mirror they hold to society is a false mirror of an aging that is invariably poverty-stricken, decrepit, stupid, and constantly in misery. 

Today’s newer “map” of aging reflects little of that antiquated mid-20^th Century perspective on age.  Unfortunately, the hot shots in media haven’t picked up on the fact that a new generation is headed its way:  60-year olds back in school, 70-year olds starting new businesses, 80-year old marathoners, and 90-year old newlyweds. 

Sadly the ultra-sophisticated and politically correct New Yorker magazine still hasn’t seen the light.  Here are several of their cartoon jabs at aging:

·        A bald, bespectacled tiny old man, seated at a swanky restaurant with a blonde one-third his age, suggests….  “Perhaps, given time, but not too much time, you could learn to love me.”

·        The inscription on a memorial statue in a park reads…   “Fred Philpot, born 1944.  Let it all hang out 1967-1979.    Stuffed it all back in 1980-2004.”

·        A doctor turns to a woman standing over a hospital bed of a man hooked up to an IV and informs her…   “It’s a very senior moment—he’s dead.”

A million laughs, don’t you agree?

The question on everyone’s mind as they weigh their prospects on this earth: will that jump in longevity continue?

What is the likelihood you and I will live into our 90s-or more?

Dr. James Vaupel, the Executive Director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research is universally considered to be one of the greatest authorities on longevity. Vaupel speculated in a speech three years ago, “A baby girl born in 2000 in Japan, Western Europe, North America, Australia, or New Zealand has a 50-50 chance of seeing the 22^nd Century.”

Said another way, life expectancy for females lucky to be born in those developed countries is now 100 years.

100 years? 50-50! What about the rest of the world? It is rapidly extending life expectancy too. Since WWII global life expectancy (including undeveloped countries like Bangla Desh, Gambia, New Guinea, and Indonesia) has increased from around 45 years to 65. Put in perspective, that is a greater gain over the past 50 years than in the previous 5,000, according to the 1999 report by the authoritative Paris-based “Commission on Global Aging.”

If life expectancy’s increase stays constant, equaling its jump between 1900-2000, how long will Americans be living by the year 2100-97 years from now? Do the math. The projection is a life expectancy of 123 years for the average American. Today less that 1% of our society reaches the Century Mark. In 100 years, if the projection holds, most everyone will pass 100 years and not look back.

But isn’t there a biologic maximum to aging? George Buffon, a French biologist of the early 19^th Century, observed the close relationship between the duration for skeletal maturity and life span across a broad spectrum of animal species. Buffon noted that large mammals live longer than small ones, and importantly, that animals tend to live six times the period needed to complete their growth, ie gain “skeletal maturity”.

Humans reach skeletal maturity in 20 years, thus Buffon theorized that most humans should live about 120 years.

More recently Richard Cutler, of the Gerontology Research Division of the US National Institute of Health, has explored the rate of development, length of reproductive period, maximum caloric consumption, and brain size to compute the “mean lifetime potential” (MLP) of a number of animals. Mice live 3 years, dogs 20 yeas, elephants live 70 years, and whales live 100 years. Cutler’s calculations lead him to conclude that the MLP for humans is 110 years.

Walter M. Bortz, MD and lecturer at Stanford Medical School and one of America’s foremost geriatric leaders, believes that if we don’t live to 100, we’re doing something wrong. His very readable two books “We Live too Short, and Die to Long” and “Dare to be 100” spell out why we should be living longer and how we can stop “shooting ourselves in the foot” geriatrically. No surprises here: More exercise. Better diet. More exercise. More exercise. Staying engaged. More exercise. Finding meaning in what we do. And oh, did I mention “more exercise?”

Certainly our American healthcare researchers are doing their part these days. Ken Dychtwald, PhD points out that more resources have been devoted to fighting disease and aging over the past 10 years than in the previous 10 centuries. Advances in tissue engineering, stem cell research, the human genome (gene mapping) project, bionic body parts, animal organ transplants, ever-improved public health advances, micro-nutrient research, and massive breakthroughs in diagnostic tools all bring that 100, or 110, or 120 life expectancy closer to each of us and faster too.

Given the amazing work in bio-engineering of these past 10 years and the next 100, it may be that humans will be pushing the 150-year limit rather than the 120 ceiling. With replaceable body parts grown of our own DNA and without rejection, it’s possible, and maybe likely.

Now if I can just learn to stay away from donuts and take longer walks every day.