1 - Three Stages in Human Evolution

2 - Stone Age Humans

3 - Greece & Rome

4 - The 17th and 18th Centuries

5 - The Social Reforms of the 19th and 20 Centuries

6 - 1950 to 2000 - The Coming Gerontocracy

7 - The Problem

8 -The Solution

Unless ageing is controlled, continued improvements in standard of living, in public health measures, and in medical technologies will be only marginally beneficial. In deed, by chipping away at diseases, either with preventive measures or with medical management, this approach insures that virtually everyone will live long enough to suffer from advanced senility; and one could easily conclude that the conventional medical and preventive paradigms and practices will result in personal and social catastrophe. This notion is in stark contrast with that which is promulgated by both conventional and alternative authorities. Consider that even in an ideal world of public health, prevention, and medicine, where no one were ever to die from the major causes of death (depicted in the table below), that such a miraculous technology would result only in an 12 year increase in average life-expectancy. And under those circumstances, virtually everyone would end up in the geriatric ward and die from prolonged senility. This is a harsh observation, and it is one that few in the health professions or agencies are willing to admit. But it is, nonetheless, reality. The real solution requires a fundamentally different approach than the disease cure model. This, we propose, is the life-extension approach; and that is summarized in the next slide.