News

Catch up on the latest developments in life settlements, the sciences of aging and facial analysis in Lapetus Solutions’ regular updates.

Most Recent

Your Personal Genetic Analysis Has Arrived

When I’m asked about the secret to exceptional longevity – a question I get often – my usual answer is to “choose long-lived parents”. Upon making this statement to a well known scientist in the field of aging, her glib answer was that she was then going to buy a...

Battling Our Own Biology

In the last quarter of 2022 I was invited to Australia to advise the Queensland Government on a global health issue that is particularly problematic in their State – childhood obesity. The reason I was invited was because of an article my colleagues and I published in...

What Exactly is “Life Expectancy”?

Life expectancy is an actuarial/demographic metric that reflects the survival and longevity dynamics of a population based on their observed death rates at all ages – usually in a given calendar year. That’s the formal definition, which is unintelligible to many....

Congressional Testimony on Aging

If you had asked me in early September whether I would be invited to testify before the U.S. Congress in mid-September on any topic, I would have laughed it off, but that is exactly what happened. On the 15th of September I testified before the U.S. Congressional...

The Importance of Asymmetry

When I give a formal talk on aging at a conference, one of the more interesting attributes about human longevity I mention that tends to shock the audience is the predictability of the survival distribution. My colleague and I have referred to this consistently...

Previous

One Step Away From Immortality

A story appeared in the news on August 14, 2022 suggesting that science is one step away from enabling people to become immortal. There are several proponents of this view, but the most prominent is Ray Kurzweil.Don’t worry, there is ZERO science to support this...

read more

Is Joe Biden Too Old to Run for a Second Term as President?

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...

read more

How Time Reveals the Secrets to Longevity

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...

read more

Radical Life Extension Is Already Here

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...

read more

The Holy Grail of Life Extension

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...

read more

If Humans Were Built to Last

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...

read more

A Potential Breakthrough in Alzheimer’s Disease

I write this newsletter with a heavy heart – my closest friend and colleague has been diagnosed with dementia and/or Alzheimer’s disease (AD). My friend (now retired) is partially responsible for having created the lifespan assessment tool we use in our life...

read more

“Bet The Under” Hedge Fund Manager Makes Costly Mistake

The brief story I’m about to tell you appeared in a longer format as the first chapter of my book entitled The Rise of Generians (2020). If you want to learn how and why Lapetus became a licensed life expectancy provider in the life settlement business – it’s all...

read more

The Price We Pay for Sex Is Death

One evening in the year 2000 the final word of my first book The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging (Norton) was written. My wife and I were about to head off to sleep that night. Knowing that I had completed something I was working on for the...

read more