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Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

it looks logical - once influenza was stopped from killing people before age 40-50, people started to live into the age where cancer/Alzheimer are among the majors. Once we reign in the cancer/etc... and will be living well into 80-90-100 something else will be the majors there. For example something computer induced (i'll personally have 65+ years at the screen (or at/with mental implant which will replace the screen in 10 years) by the age of 80). Or something like "you've been terminated as ratio of you production/consumption fell below 1" :)

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The present outer limits, the very dramatic falloff in survival past age 100, appears to be largely caused by senile systemic amyloidosis, based on autopsy evidence from the recent past. Misfolded proteins, amyloids, clog up your cardiovascular system until it fails. This will kill those who survive everything else. Unlike other better known forms of amyloid these are proteins involved in thyroid hormone transport.

The SENS Research Foundation funds some of the work on potential treatments for this condition, based on a new approach in biotechnology using what are called catalyic antibodies [1] to break down the amyloid, though it is fair to note that as in many of these things much of the research community interest where it exists at all lies in treating the rare genetic variant that young people can suffer. It's called transthyretin-related hereditary amyloidosis, but it is basically the same process - you can just only suffer it young if you have exactly the right rare mutation.

[1]: http://dx.doi.org/10.1074/jbc.M114.557231

The other possibility is that an increasingly poor diet and lack of exercise are contributing to higher mortality from cancer and heart disease. People used to walk a lot more and be more likely to do manual labour, but nowadays (especially in the USA) people hardly walk at all. Also, people eat a lot more processed food than they used to.

Not sure why the downvote. There is overwhelming evidence showing that both cancer and heart disease are significantly influenced by diet and exercise.

Not sure about overwhelming, but there's certainly evidence imo.

The down vote was probably because you didn't suggest to google "Sugar metabolic disease cancer" or "Sugar metabolic disease Alzheimer's", followed by a few example results such as:

- http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/719423

- http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-09/newest-impact-...

Probably because the data in the post suggests otherwise:

- The causes of death with the strongest correlation to diet and exercise (heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes) have increased only slightly.

- All those causes of death have some degree of correlation with age

- The cause of death most strongly correlated with old age is the one showing the strongest increase (the correlation between diet and exercise and cancer is tenuous at best)

- It doesn't explain the heart disease peak in the '60s

Cancer, Heart disease, and Diabetes have far more effective treatments now vs the 1960's suggesting a massive 'hidden' increase.

CPR for example was first promoted as a technique for the public to learn in the 1970s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cardiopulmonary_resu...

Yep, I'd like to see a similar thing but in age bands.

I saw a great video somewhere I forget where about viruses and how vaccines dramatically reduced deaths from viruses.

I'm not sure what an age band is but the I saw video showed data of infections for many years it showed typical chart with peaks during each year. That data was rotated 90 degrees toward us the viewers so now each peak showed as a single vertical line.

The end result was a horizontal barcode type chart showing different clusters in certain decades.

Up to 1960 it was very dense waves but after 1960 (almost exactly) it's as if someone flipped a switch and suddenly large numbers of deaths from viruses stopped.

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