The Evolution of Death: Why We Are Living Longer

Notes

Notes PREFACE 1. de Grey, 2004c. INTRODUCTION: DEATH THE MYSTERY 1. This is not to say that biologists are keen to change human beings. Indeed, “Because most life scientists have, along with everyone else, dismissed out of hand any thought of a possible fundamental reordering of the body, they are at a loss as to how to judge the import of human cloning, for example, a method through which the body could conceivably be reconfigured for the better” (Gins and Arakawa, 2002, xvii). 2. According to some Christian fundamentalists, death is not a flaw but the appropriate end of life for unconverted human beings. God will provide until Christ’s return, but at the time of the apocalypse, or showdown in the valley of Armageddon, all God’s “political and religious opponents [will] suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow” (Moyers, 2005, 23). 3. Wowk, 2004, especially 136. 4. de Magalhães, 2004, 4. Later in the same essay, de Magalhães defines aging as “a sexually transmitted terminal disease that can be defined as a number of time-dependent changes in the body that lead to discomfort, pain, and eventually death” (48). 5. Epistle of Pavl: Apostle to the Romanes, The. 83kb. Chapt. VI. 5kb, 1996–2003. For additional theories of death see Comfort, 1979 and Medvedev, 1990. 6. Genesis 3:19. 1996–2003. 7. Vaughan, 1650, “My God! thou that didst dye for me,” 1650. 8. Douglas, c1855, “For bonnie Annie Lawrie, I’d lay me down and dee.” 9. Shakespeare, 1605, King Lear. iv. i. 38, [1994–1995]. 10. Derrida, 1992, 15. 173 11. Derrida, 1992, 41. 12. Nagel, 1992, 1. CHAPTER 1. EVOLUTION: DEATH’S UNIFYING PRINCIPLE 1. In their erudite Chance, Development, and Aging, Caleb Finch and Tom Kirkwood (2000) gravitate toward chance (another label for the unknown) and away from genes as the component of life that shapes death. 2. For overview, see Jazwinski, 1996. 3. Medawar and Medawar, 1983, 66–67. 4. In the words of the Reverend Thomas Malthus, “I only conclude that man is mortal because the invariable experience of all ages has proved the mortality of those materials of which his visible body is made” (Malthus, 1970, 129). 5. The entire title of the piece was Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other Writers. It preceded the revolution in actuarial science inspired in 1815 by Joshua Milne (1776–1851) in Treatise on Annuities and Assurances on Lives and Survivorship, and thus lacked the statistical finesse of later work. Malthus, 1970, 71 and 73. 6. Quoted from Flew, in Malthus, 1970, 24. 7. Malthus, 1970, 103. 8. Malthus, 1970, 250. The Summary was first published as an appendix to the third edition Essay on the Principle of Population but was then published separately in 1830. 9. Darwin, 1995, 40. 10. Letter from A. R. Wallace to A. Newton, 1887, in Darwin, 1995, 189. 11. Todes, 1989, 19. 12. Bonhoeffer et al., 2004, 1549; also see Sanjuán, Moya, and Elena, 2004; but see Michalakis and Roze, 2004, who conclude that recombination is antagonistic when the genes involve lower fitness individually. 13. For a recent variation on the theme of altruistic death see Fabrizio et al., 2004. 14. In order to avoid confounding data on juvenile periods, including the period of hatching and neonatal depression, these distributions begin after an initial period, one day for Drosophila and twelve years for Homo sapiens. The data on Proales begin at parthenogenetic hatching. (These data were gather by Dr. Bessie Noyes [Noyes, 1922] and are cited in Pearls, 1924.) All data quoted from Pearl, 1924, 336–77, table 112. Typically, the number of survivors is plotted as a log function and the drop off is much steeper as a consequence. Here the number is plotted as a linear function in order to facilitate comparisons with figures presented elsewhere in this book. 174 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 15. I should point out that each curve refers to hatched, born, or pupated organisms and not to their embryonic or larval forms. Had these been included, the curves would have fallen initially before entering their first level period. For other examples of survivorship curves, see Finch and Kirkwood, 2000. 16. Of course, if life span is determined in...