Medicine: The 150-Year-Old Man

The average American man today can expect to live to be 68; but some doctors think he should live to 150. The lower animals do much better than man. Said Dr. Edward L. Bortz, president of the American Medical Association, last week: a dog is full-grown at two years, lives to an average twelve; a cat is full-grown at ij, lives to ten; a horse, full-grown at four, reaches 25. Reasoned Dr. Bortz: “If a man is physically mature at 25, then he should have an average normal life span of 150 years.”

One of the reasons man does not live a dog’s full life is a group of degenerative diseases that attack the heart, kidneys, brain and arteries in middle-and old-age. At least 4,000,000 people in the U.S. now have heart disease, said Dr. Bortz. Unless something is done to stop it, said Dr. Andrew C. Ivy of the University of Illinois, half the babies born in 1940 will eventually die of various types of degenerative diseases of the circulatory system and kidneys.

The same meeting (of the American Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association) heard an announcement of new support for the fight against degenerative diseases: the Pharmaceutical-Medical Research Foundation, formed by the drug-makers and the A.M.A. Next year the foundation will spend $250,000, largely contributed by the pharmaceutical industry. Most of the money will go to institutions already at work on research in this field.