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" If we do everything right, the best we can do is live out our potential with as little age-related disease and disability as possible. "

S. Jay Olshansky

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" Lifespan extension has never really been a goal of aging science, nor should it. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" The only control we have over the duration of our life is to shorten it, and we do that all the time. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" The fact is that nothing in gerontology even comes close to fulfilling the promise of dramatically extended lifespan, in spite of bold claims to the contrary that by now should sound familiar. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" Physical immortality is seductive. The ancient Hindus sought it; the Greek physician Galen from the 2nd Century A.D. and the Arabic philosopher/physician Avicenna from the 11th Century A.D. believed in it. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" The evolutionary theory of senescence can be stated as follows: while bodies are not designed to fail, neither are they designed for extended operation. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" Once DNA acquires the ability to persist forever, the carriers become disposable. Essentially, our bodies are designed to last long enough to reproduce. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" Once you avoid the things that accelerate aging like smoking, obesity, excessive alcohol consumption, and excessive sun exposure, you've done about as much as you can to influence your aging process. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" The modern rise of Alzheimer's Disease in the twentieth century is not a sign of failure. It's a sign of success. Success in living long enough to see that disease expressed. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" The vast majority of studies say anti-aging supplements don't work. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" If you can slow the biological process of aging, even a minor slowdown in the rate at which we age yields improvements in virtually every condition of frailty and disability and mortality that we see at later ages. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" I don't have a fear of aging or a fear of death. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" While eliminating smallpox and curtailing cholera added decades of life to vast populations, cures for the chronic diseases of old age cannot have the same effect on life expectancy. A cure for cancer would be miraculous and welcome, but it would lead to only a three-year increase in life expectancy at birth. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" Fixing obesity is going to require a change in our modern relationship with food. I'm hopeful that we begin to see a turnaround in this childhood obesity epidemic. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" Death is a zero sum game for which there is no cure. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" The field of ageing research is full of characters. We have hucksters claiming that cures for ageing can be bought and sold; prophetic seers, their hands extended for money, warning that immortality is nigh; and would-be Nobelists working methodically in laboratories in search of a pill to slow ageing. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" We have grown accustomed to the wonders of clean water, indoor plumbing, laser surgery, genetic engineering, artificial joints, replacement body parts, and the much longer lives that accompany them. Yet we should remember that the vast majority of humans ever born died before the age of 10 from an infectious disease. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" What we know for sure from our work and from others' is that mice have a life span of 1,000 days, dogs have 5,000 days, and we humans have 29,000 days. Recognizing that the duration is limited, and aging is inevitable, focus the attention on enhancing the quality of the days you have. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" A lot of people are living in a dream world - they want to deny that aging occurs or believe it doesn't have to occur. They'll hold on to this belief until the moment they die. The reality will eventually hit them. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" In the developed world, we live 30 years longer, on average, than our ancestors born a century ago, but the price we pay for those added years is the rise of chronic diseases. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" Just because someone looks old doesn't mean he or she is. The skin of some people who spend a lot of time outdoors seems to age very rapidly. Someone can look 80 or 90 and only be 40 to 50. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" As soon as a handful of scientists come up with an intervention shown to influence aging in other species, they begin selling it as an intervention for humans, even though there may not be evidence it works. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" Older people may have always existed throughout history, but they were rare. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" In Genesis 6:3, it says man can live to be 120, but there is no scientific basis for it. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" The bodies we have are not made for extended use. We must cope with accumulated DNA damage, cell damage, muscle atrophy, bone loss, decreased muscle mass, and joints worn out from overuse during a lifetime of bipedal locomotion. It might have worked great for prehistoric humans, but it wreaks havoc on our knees and hips. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" The way that we are going after ageing, I think, is a problem. The modern medical model is basically designed to attack one disease at a time. Independent of all other diseases and independent of the basic process of ageing itself. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" Do we really want to continue to push out the envelope of survival only to see other things crop up that we may not like? "

S. Jay Olshansky

" Growing new limbs, copying internal organs like a Xerox machine, exponential increases in computing power, better eyes and ears - I could read stories like this endlessly. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" There is a possibility that there is somebody out there alive today over 122, but we'll probably never know it, because in all likelihood they come from either China or India, and they don't have reliable birth records. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" We're not trying to make us live forever; we're not trying to even make us live significantly longer. What we're trying to do is extend the period of healthy life. "

S. Jay Olshansky

" The last thing you ever want to do is extend the period of frailty and disability and make people unhealthy for a longer time period. So lifespan extension in and of itself should not be the goal of medicine, nor should it be the goal of public health, nor should it be the goal of aging science. "

S. Jay Olshansky