Re: Aging and life expectancy

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Dec 08 1999 - 18:48:55 MST


Jeff Davis <jdavis@socketscience.com> writes:

> It's interesting to note that if your heart, liver, kidneys, etc. function
> at 99% of the minimum necessary to sustain life, then, well,... you die.
> 100%, you live, 99%, gonners.

Yes, but the important question is: how far are we from those limits?
Normally the liver has a lot of extra capacity and regrows amazingly
well. There are people who live ordinary lives with 75% of their heart
muscle dead (the trick is to have the right parts of the heart in
order), and you need to loose quite a few percent of the neurons of a
brain system to get observable effects. The body is quite fault
tolerant.

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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