Many medical authorities predict that average life expectancy could well exceed 100 years by mid 21st century and rise even higher soon thereafter. This prospect, brought on by the revolution in molecular biology and information technology, confronts policymakers and public health officials with a host of new questions: how will increased longevity affect demographic trends, government taxation and spending, the workplace and health care? What ethical and quality-of-life issues are raised by these new breakthroughs? This title explores these questions as practicing scientists and public policy experts come together to address the technical aspects and policy implications of increased longevity. The book is intended to begin a discussion in political, social and medical circles that will serve to prepare us for the extraordinary possibilities that may await us.
Henry J. Aaron is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he holds the Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Chair. Among his many books are Can We Say No? The Challenge of Rationing Health Care, with William B. Schwartz and Melissa Cox (Brookings, 2006), and Reforming Medicare: Options,Tradeoffs, and Opportunities, written with Jeanne Lambrew (Brookings, 2008). William B. Schwartz is an expert on national health policy and is a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California. He was formerly chairman of the Department of Medicine and Vannevar Bush Professor at Tufts University and was also president of the American Society of Nephrology.
"... the main thesis in Coping with Methuselah is that future developments in molecular and supramolecular biomedicine will really enable us to defy the evolutionary constraints of body design and biochemistry, and that life-spans of hundreds and thousands of years will be attainable by most, if not all.... All seven chapters of the book are excellent examples of scholarly academic writing.... Coping with Methuselah is a challenge that you may like to take up, and if you succeed, you will surely be much wiser and better informed." Suresh I.S. Rattan, University of Aarhus, Denmark, Embo Reports, 6/1/2004 |"[A] careful, academic overview of a number of related issues surrounding people living significantly longer." Hugh Long, Inquiry - Excellus Health Plan, 1/1/2004 |"This book is a useful collection of evidence, for those not already familiar with the issues." Marcus Longley, University of Glamorgan, Social Policy, 10/15/2004 |"COPING WITH METHUSELAH is an important book about the future of the human lifespan, the possibility of a revolution in longevity... and the social and economic consequences that would result from living much longer lives than we do today." Leonid Gavrilov, Ph.D., National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, The New England Journal of Medicine, 12/16/2004 |"This book is both stimulating and reassuring by its brilliant display of scholarship and thoughtful counterpoint on a compelling subject that will shape the future for generations to come." Anthony J. Lechich, MD, Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center, New York, Care Management Journals
