NYTimes's Sara Davidson has a fascinating interview with Lenny Guarente of MIT and Robert Butler of the National Institute of Aging. They cover a lot of things: biological basis of aging, calorie-restricted diet, Alzheimer's disease, philosophical issues, etc. And, oh, they discuss marriage too:
What about the institution of marriage? If you’re going to live to 100 and get married at 22 or 25. ...
BUTLER: Oh, you are evil.
Are you still going to vow “till death do us part”?
BUTLER: There’s a demographer, Peter Uhlenberg, who said that divorce is a substitute for death, because in the old days there was enough death, unfortunately, particularly of women in childbirth, that the men would remarry. Someone even calculated that marriage now lasts about as long as it did then, but it was ended then by death rather than by divorce. So maybe you’re onto something.
Nice interview...although this seems very impressive, in general I am a little skeptical of such miracle remedies until they are shown to consistently work on a large scale. I am quite impressed with resveratrol, but the verdict is still out there. Let's see...
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