Aging, Natural Death, and the Compression of Morbidity

To the Editor: In their Sounding Board article (Oct. 6 issue),¹ Schneider and Brody direct attention to the “compression of morbidity,”² raising issues discussed in detail elsewhere.^3,4 In contrast to the authors' belief in a life-span increase, the U.S. record, 113 years and 214 days, was established in 1928; the Canadian record holder, at 113 years and 124 days, died in 1814! These marks, moreover, are for individuals; the species' life span must be an average; one would not describe human height as 224 cm. Nine convergent estimates of life span,⁴ including demographic, anthropologic, physiologic, species, historical, and observational data,.