by S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D. | Jul 28, 2022 | Uncategorized
This story begins on the 4th of August, 2011 in Chicago. President Obama was on a local television station talking about his 50th birthday – I happened to be watching. The reporter then cut to an interview with a physician who was asked about Obama’s graying hair and...
by S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D. | Jun 16, 2022 | Uncategorized
The Power of Selective Survival Many years ago my 85 year old mother and 90 year old father were at dinner with my wife and I. When the meal was over, the time arrived to decide whether to have dessert. Mom looked down at her pudgy self and declared, as she had every...
by S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D. | May 19, 2022 | Uncategorized
In April of this year I attended a conference in London sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation. I’ve been a member of their MacArthur Research Network on an Aging Society for the last twelve years – we hold these meetings often. One of my colleagues in the Network...
by S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D. | Apr 21, 2022 | Uncategorized
In a previous newsletter, I asked the question of why babies are born so young when the cells in their parent’s bodies used to make the babies are most often decades old. The answer was that the germ cells (eggs and sperm) reset biological time to zero at conception....
by S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D. | Mar 23, 2022 | Uncategorized
About 22 years ago scientists conducting research on the aging of mice noticed that some of the animals unexpectedly experienced what looked like rapid aging. Their fur began disappearing; they could no longer move as easily as before; and their eyes filled with...
by S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D. | Feb 23, 2022 | Uncategorized
What stands out, if it isn’t obvious, is the common theme of natural selection that with rare exceptions (humans and whales for example), mammals are quadrupeds. That is, they move about with four appendages on the ground rather than two (feet) like the humans walking...
