Seminar Series: James Vaupel, Duke University

Mortality is being postponed at older ages. This finding, documented in 1994 and bolstered since, is a fundamental discovery about the biology of human ageing, a discovery with profound implications for individuals, society and the economy. Remarkably, the rate of deterioration with age seems to be constant across individuals and over time: it appears that death is being delayed because people are reaching older ages in better health. Research by demographers, epidemiologists and other biomedical researchers suggests that further progress is likely to be made in advancing the frontier of survival¿and healthy survival¿to higher and higher ages.