User:MaynardClark/Aging-Longevity



If we live long enough, we'll become old(er), also!

Couple at a high school reunion: "I thought we would enjoy this, but did you get a look at all these old people?"

Aging (American English) or Ageing (British English) is the accumulation of changes in a person over time. Ageing in humans refers to a multidimensional process of physical, psychological, and social change. Some dimensions of ageing grow and expand over time, while others decline. Reaction time, for example, may slow with age, while knowledge of world events and wisdom may expand. Research shows that even late in life, potential exists for physical, mental, and social growth and development. Ageing is an important part of all human societies reflecting the biological changes that occur, but also reflecting cultural and societal conventions. Ageing is among the largest known risk factors for most human diseases. Roughly 100,000 people worldwide die each day of age-related causes.

Age is measured chronologically, and a person's birthday is often an important event. However the term "ageing" is somewhat ambiguous. Distinctions may be made between "universal ageing" (age changes that all people share) and "probabilistic ageing" (age changes that may happen to some, but not all people as they grow older including diseases such as type two diabetes). Chronological ageing may also be distinguished from "social ageing" (cultural age-expectations of how people should act as they grow older) and "biological ageing" (an organism's physical state as it ages). There is also a distinction between "proximal ageing" (age-based effects that come about because of factors in the recent past) and "distal ageing" (age-based differences that can be traced back to a cause early in person's life, such as childhood poliomyelitis). Chronological age does not correlate perfectly with functional age, i.e. two people may be of the same age, but differ in their mental and physical capacities. Each nation, government and non-government organisation has different ways of classifying age.

Population ageing is the increase in the number and proportion of older people in society. Population ageing has three possible causes: migration, longer life expectancy (decreased death rate) and decreased birth rate. Ageing has a significant impact on society. Young people tend to commit most crimes, they are more likely to push for political and social change, to develop and adopt new technologies and to need education, the latter of which tend to lose political significance for people in the ageing process. Older people have different requirements from society and government as opposed to young people and frequently differing values as well, such as for property and pension rights. Older people are also far more likely to vote and in many countries the young are forbidden from voting. Thus, the aged have comparatively more, or at least different, political influence.

Recent scientific successes in rejuvenation and extending a lifespan of model animals (mice 2.5 times, yeast and nematodes 10 times) and discovery of variety of species (including humans of advanced ages) having negligible senescence give hope to achieve negligible senescence (cancel ageing) for younger humans, reverse ageing or at least significantly delay it.Some aspects of bacterial senescence may lend support to contemporary theories of aging, including the free radical, antagonistic pleiotropy, and disposable soma theories. Ageing is the major cause of mortality in the developed world.

Senescence
In biology, senescence is the state or process of aging. Cellular senescence is a phenomenon where isolated cells demonstrate a limited ability to divide in culture (the Hayflick Limit, discovered by Leonard Hayflick in 1961), while organismal senescence is the ageing of organisms. After a period of near perfect renewal (in humans, between 20 and 35 years of age), organismal senescence is characterised by the declining ability to respond to stress, increasing homeostatic imbalance and the increased risk of disease. Ageing is among the largest known risk factors for most human diseases. This currently irreversible series of changes inevitably ends in death. Some researchers (specifically biogerontologists) are treating ageing as a disease. As genes that have an effect on ageing are discovered, ageing is increasingly being regarded in a similar fashion to other genetically influenced "conditions," potentially "treatable".

There are three main metabolic pathways which influence the rate of ageing: caloric restriction, the insulin/IGF-1-like signalling pathway, and the activity levels of the electron transport chain. Before these were discovered, ageing was considered to be a progressive decline in function. It is likely that these three pathways affect ageing separately, because targeting them simultaneously leads to additive increases in lifespan.

Ageing and longevity are determined by a complex mixture of environmental and genetic factors. The genetic aspect has been demonstrated in studies of centenarians, and in model organisms where single-gene mutations have been shown to dramatically increase lifespan. These genes have homologues in the mammalian genome, making them useful both in studying ageing and in identifying potential targets for interventions which increase lifespan. These genes also increase lifespan in mice, and in some cases have been shown to associate with human longevity.

Numerous species show very low signs of ageing ("negligible senescence"), the best known being trees like the bristlecone pine (however Hayflick states that the bristlecone pine has no cells older than 30 years), fish like the sturgeon and the rockfish, invertebrates like the quahog and sea anemone and lobster.

In humans and other animals, cellular senescence has been attributed to the shortening of telomeres with each cell cycle; when telomeres become too short, the cells die. The length of telomeres is therefore the "molecular clock", predicted by Hayflick. The quantity of the hematopoietic stem cells that produce the blood components residing in the bone marrow of human beings have been found to decline with ageing. Stem cells regenerative capacity is affected by the age of the recipient.

Other genes are known to affect the ageing process. The sirtuin family of genes have been shown to have a significant effect on the lifespan of yeast and nematodes. Over-expression of the RAS2 gene increases lifespan in yeast by 30%.

In addition to genetic ties to lifespan, diet (specifically, caloric restriction) has been shown to substantially affect lifespan in many animals, including delay or prevention of many age-related diseases. Typically, this involves caloric intake to 60–70% of what an ad libitum animal would consume, while still maintaining proper nutrient intake. In rodents, it has been shown to increase lifespan by up to 50%; it also works for many other species beyond mice, including species as diverse as yeast and Drosophila, and likely includes primates as well. There are two major studies of caloric restriction being performed in rhesus monkeys, one at the US National Institutes of Health, and the other at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The basis for caloric restriction remains unclear, though it is likely mediated by nutrient-sensing pathways such as the mTOR pathway.

Evidence in both animals and humans suggests that resveratrol may be a caloric restriction mimetic.

In his book How and Why We Age, Hayflick says that caloric restriction may not be effective in humans, citing data from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging which shows that being thin does not favour longevity.

Of the roughly 150,000 people who die each day across the globe, about two thirds—100,000 per day—die of age-related causes. In industrialised nations, the proportion is much higher, reaching 90%.



The word "longevity" is sometimes used as a synonym for "life expectancy" in demography - however, the term "longevity" is sometimes meant to refer only to especially long lived members of a population, whereas "life expectancy" is always defined statistically as the average number of years remaining at a given age. For example, a population's life expectancy at birth is the same as the average age at death for all people born in the same year (in the case of cohorts). Longevity is best thought of as a term for general audiences meaning 'typical length of life' and specific statistical definitions should be clarified when necessary.

Reflections on longevity have usually gone beyond acknowledging the brevity of human life and have included thinking about methods to extend life. Longevity has been a topic not only for the scientific community but also for writers of travel, science fiction, and utopian novels.

There are many difficulties in authenticating the longest human life span ever by modern verification standards, owing to inaccurate or incomplete birth statistics. Fiction, legend, and folklore have proposed or claimed life spans in the past or future vastly longer than those verified by modern standards, and longevity narratives and unverified longevity claims frequently speak of their existence in the present.

A life annuity is a form of longevity insurance.

History
A remarkable statement mentioned by Diogenes Laertius (c. 250 AD) is the earliest (or at least one of the earliest) references about plausible centenarian longevity given by a scientist, the astronomer Hipparchus of Nicea (c. 185 – c. 120 BC), who, according to the doxographer, was assured that the philosopher Democritus of Abdera (c. 470/460 – c. 370/360 BC) lived 109 years. All other accounts given by the ancients about the age of Democritus appear, without giving any specific age, to agree that the philosopher lived over 100 years. This possibility is likely, given that many ancient Greek philosophers are thought to have lived over the age of 90 (e.g., Xenophanes of Colophon, c. 570/565 – c. 475/470 BC, Pyrrho of Ellis, c. 360 – c. 270 BC,  Eratosthenes of Cirene, c. 285 – c. 190 BC, etc.). The case of Democritus is different from the case of, for example, Epimenides of Crete (7th, 6th centuries BC), who is said to have lived 154, 157 or 290 years, as has been said about countless elders even during the last centuries as well as in the present time.

Present life expectancy
Various factors contribute to an individual's longevity. Significant factors in life expectancy include gender, genetics, access to health care, hygiene, diet and nutrition, exercise, lifestyle, and crime rates. Below is a list of life expectancies in different types of countries:
 * Developed countries: 77–90 years (e.g. Canada: 81.29 years, 2010 est.)
 * Developing countries: 32–80 years (e.g. Mozambique: 41.37 years, 2010 est.)

Population longevities are increasing as life expectancies around the world grow:
 * Spain: 79.08 years in 2002, 81.07 years in 2010
 * Australia: 80 years in 2002, 81.72 years in 2010
 * Italy: 79.25 years in 2002, 80.33 years in 2010
 * France: 79.05 years in 2002, 81.09 years in 2010
 * Germany: 77.78 years in 2002, 79.41 years in 2010
 * UK: 80 years in 2002, 81.73 years in 2010
 * USA: 77.4 years in 2002, 78.24 years in 2010
 * Monaco: 79.12 years in 2002, 89.73 years in 2011

Long-lived individuals
The Gerontology Research Group validates current longevity records by modern standards, and maintains a list of supercentenarians; many other unvalidated longevity claims exist. Record-holding individuals include:
 * Geert Adriaans Boomgaard (1788–1899, 110 years, 135 days): first person to reach the age of 110 (on September 21, 1898) and whose age could be validated.
 * Jeanne Calment (1875–1997, 122 years, 164 days): the oldest person in history whose age has been verified by modern documentation. This defines the modern human life span, which is set by the oldest documented individual who ever lived.
 * Sarah Knauss (1880–1999, 119 years, 97 days): the second oldest documented person in modern times and the oldest American.
 * Jiroemon Kimura (1897-2013): celebrated his 116th birthday in April 2013, was the oldest man in history whose age has been verified by modern documentation, and passed away on 12 June 2013.
 * Misao Okawa (born 1898): the oldest living person in the world.

Longevity and lifestyle
Evidence-based studies indicate that longevity is based on two major factors, genetics and lifestyle choices. Twin studies have estimated that approximately 20-30% of an individual’s lifespan is related to genetics, the rest is due to individual behaviors and environmental factors which can be modified. Although over 200 gene variants have been, according to the LongevityMap database, associated with human longevity, these explain only a small fraction of the heritability of longevity. Recent studies find that even modest amounts of leisure time physical exercise can extend life expectancy by as much as 4.5 years.

In preindustrial times, deaths at young and middle age were common, and lifespans over 70 years were comparatively rare. This is not due to genetics, but because of environmental factors such as disease, accidents, and malnutrition, especially since the former were not generally treatable with pre-20th century medicine. Deaths from childbirth were common in women, and many children did not live past infancy. In addition, most people who did attain old age were likely to die quickly from the above-mentioned untreatable health problems. Despite this, we do find a large number of examples of pre-20th century individuals attaining lifespans of 75 years or greater, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Cato the Elder, Thomas Hobbes, Eric of Pomerania, Christopher Polhem, and Michelangelo. This was also true for poorer people like peasants or laborers. Genealogists will almost certainly find ancestors living to their 70s, 80s and even 90s several hundred years ago.

For example, an 1871 census in the UK (the first of its kind) found the average male life expectancy as being 44, but if infant mortality is subtracted, males who lived to adulthood averaged 75 years. The present male life expectancy in the UK is 77 years for males and 81 for females (the United States averages 74 for males and 80 for females).

Studies have shown that black American males have the shortest lifespans of any group of people in the US, averaging only 69 years (Oriental American females average the longest). This reflects overall poorer health and greater prevalence of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer among black American men.

Women normally outlive men, and this was as true in pre-industrial times as today. Theories for this include smaller bodies (and thus less stress on the heart), a stronger immune system (since testosterone acts as an immunosuppressant), and less tendency to engage in physically dangerous activities.

Study of the regions of the world known as blue zones, where people commonly live active lives past 100 years of age, have speculated that longevity is related to a healthy social and family life, not smoking, eating a plant-based diet, frequent consumption of legumes and nuts, and engaging in regular physical activity. In another well-designed cohort study, the combination of a plant based diet, frequent consumption of nuts, regular physical activity, normal BMI, and not smoking accounted for differences up to 10 years in life expectancy. The Alameda County Study hypothesized three additional lifestyle characteristics that promote longevity: limiting alcohol consumption, sleeping 7 to 8 hours per night, and not snacking (eating between meals), although the study found the association between these characteristics and mortality is "weak at best".

Longevity traditions
Longevity traditions are traditions about long-lived people (generally supercentenarians), and practices that have been believed to confer longevity. A comparison and contrast of "longevity in antiquity" (such as the Sumerian King List, the genealogies of Genesis, and the Persian Shahnameh) with "longevity in historical times" (common-era cases through twentieth-century news reports) is elaborated in detail in Lucian Boia's 2004 book Forever Young: A Cultural History of Longevity from Antiquity to the Present and other sources.

The Fountain of Youth reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. The New Testament, following older Jewish tradition, attributes healing to the Pool of Bethesda when the waters are "stirred" by an angel. After the death of Juan Ponce de León, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés wrote in Historia General y Natural de las Indias (1535) that Ponce de León was looking for the waters of Bimini to cure his aging. Traditions that have been believed to confer greater human longevity also include alchemy, such as that attributed to Nicolas Flamel. In the modern era, the Okinawa diet has some reputation of linkage to exceptionally high ages.

More recent longevity claims are subcategorized by many editions of Guinness World Records into four groups: "In late life, very old people often tend to advance their ages at the rate of about 17 years per decade .... Several celebrated super-centenarians (over 110 years) are believed to have been double lives (father and son, relations with the same names or successive bearers of a title) .... A number of instances have been commercially sponsored, while a fourth category of recent claims are those made for political ends ...." The estimate of 17 years per decade was corroborated by the 1901 and 1911 British censuses. Mazess and Forman also discovered in 1978 that inhabitants of Vilcabamba, Ecuador, claimed excessive longevity by using their fathers' and grandfathers' baptismal entries. Time magazine considered that, by the Soviet Union, longevity had been elevated to a state-supported "Methuselah cult". Robert Ripley regularly reported supercentenarian claims in Ripley's Believe It or Not!, usually citing his own reputation as a fact-checker to claim reliability.

Future
The U.S. Census Bureau view on the future of longevity is that life expectancy in the United States will be in the mid-80s by 2050 (up from 77.85 in 2006) and will top out eventually in the low 90s, barring major scientific advances that can change the rate of human aging itself, as opposed to merely treating the effects of aging as is done today. The Census Bureau also predicted that the United States would have 5.3 million people aged over 100 in 2100. The United Nations has also made projections far out into the future, up to 2300, at which point it projects that life expectancies in most developed countries will be between 100 and 106 years and still rising, though more and more slowly than before. These projections also suggest that life expectancies in poor countries will still be less than those in rich countries in 2300, in some cases by as much as 20 years. The UN itself mentioned that gaps in life expectancy so far in the future may well not exist, especially since the exchange of technology between rich and poor countries and the industrialization and development of poor countries may cause their life expectancies to converge fully with those of rich countries long before that point, similarly to the way life expectancies between rich and poor countries have already been converging over the last 60 years as better medicine, technology, and living conditions became accessible to many people in poor countries. The UN has warned that these projections are uncertain, and cautions that any change or advancement in medical technology could invalidate such projections.

Recent increases in the rates of lifestyle diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, may eventually slow or reverse this trend toward increasing life expectancy in the developed world, but have not yet done so.

Scientist Olshansky examined how much mortality from various causes would have to drop in order to boost life expectancy and concluded that most of the past increases in life expectancy occurred because of improved survival rates for young people. He states that it seems unlikely that life expectancy at birth will ever exceed 85 years.

However, since 1840, record life expectancy has risen linearly for men and women, albeit more slowly for men. For women the increase has been almost three months per year. In light of steady increase, without any sign of limitation, the suggestion that life expectancy will top out must be treated with caution. Scientists Oeppen and Vaupel observe that experts who assert that "life expectancy is approaching a ceiling ... have repeatedly been proven wrong." It is thought that life expectancy for women has increased more dramatically owing to the considerable advances in medicine related to childbirth.

Mice have been genetically engineered to live twice as long as ordinary mice. Drugs such as deprenyl are a part of the prescribing pharmacopia of veterinarians specifically to increase mammal lifespan. A large plurality of research chemicals have been described at the scientific literature that increase the lifespan of a number of species.

Some argue that molecular nanotechnology will greatly extend human life spans. If the rate of increase of life span can be raised with these technologies to a level of twelve months increase per year, this is defined as effective biological immortality and is the goal of radical life extension.

Non-human biological longevity
Currently living: Non-living:
 * Methuselah: 4,800-year-old bristlecone pine in the White Mountains of California, the oldest currently living organism known.
 * Possibly 250 million year-old bacteria, bacillus permians, were revived from stasis after being found in sodium chloride crystals in a cavern in New Mexico. Russell Vreeland, and colleagues from West Chester University in Pennsylvania, reported on October 18, 2000 that they had revived the halobacteria after bathing them with a nutrient solution. If they had survived for 250 million years, they would be the oldest living organisms ever recorded. However, their findings date the crystal surrounding the bacteria, and DNA analysis suggests the bacteria themselves are likely to be less ancient.
 * A bristlecone pine nicknamed "Prometheus", felled in the Great Basin National Park in Nevada in 1964, found to be about 4,900 years old, is the longest-lived single organism known.
 * The quahog clam (Arctica islandica) is exceptionally long-lived, with a maximum recorded age of 507 years, the longest of any animal. Other clams of the species have been recorded as living up to 374 years.
 * Lamellibrachia luymesi, a deep-sea cold-seep tubeworm, is estimated to reach ages of over 250 years based on a model of its growth rates.
 * Hanako (Koi Fish) was the longest-lived vertebrate ever recorded at 226 years.
 * A Bowhead Whale killed in a hunt was found to be approximately 211 years old (possibly up to 245 years old), the longest lived mammal known.
 * Tu'i Malila, a radiated tortoise presented to the Tongan royal family by Captain Cook, lived for over 185 years. It is the oldest documented reptile. Adwaitya, an Aldabra Giant Tortoise, may have lived for up to 250 years.

Biological immortality
Certain exotic organisms do not seem to be subject to aging and can live indefinitely. Examples include Tardigrades and Hydras. That is not to say that these organisms cannot die, merely that they only die as a result of disease or injury rather than age-related deterioration (and that they are not subject to the Hayflick limit).

Those Who Have Gone Before
Most of Maynard's earliest schoolteachers have retired from teaching, have enjoyed a happy retirement in safety and comfort, and have died.

Miss Leonard - Louise Leonard

He and a high school classmate (a university English teacher) stopped in to visit two of their mutually best-loved high school teachers. Their high school college English teacher, Louise Leonard, was 96 at the time. 'Miss Leonard' had lost her twin sister at a much earlier age. That twin sister (whose color photo gracing that apartment showed how similar the twins looked) had married; perhaps it took its toll of stress on her. 'Miss Leonard' had never married and was as witty and mentally sharp at 96 as she had been decades before. She sat them down in her posh retiree apartment and taught them a historical lesson, lecturing about some of their hometown's notable, formative historical events, through which she in her youth and adolescence had lives. Presumably, 'Miss Leonard' has died by now. Maybe we should say, she has fallen asleep peacefully during the sermon in that great Methodist church in the sky!

John Smarelli, High School Orchestra Director

High School Orchestra Director John Smarelli didn't fare as well. AT their visit, they saw their beloved violinist/conductor/music teacher as a double amputee. Both the band director and the orchestra director had suffered from diabetes. The band director (Maynard's trumpet teacher) had died in January that year, having collapsed alone in his home. The once happy orchestra director had become a very sad tale of many cascading woes, and his reminisces provided a poignant commentary on how each of the body's parts can work with some independence of the others.

College Roommate and Aging Research

One of Maynard's college housemates (from Lincoln House - since demolished, behind Edman Memorial Chapel at Wheaton College) moved to the West Coast soon after Maynard went there and, after a series of serious maneuvers, he positioned himself as a postdoc to conduct aging research at the cellular level, with Dr. Linus Pauling of Stanford, who by then had become famous for his research relevant to Vitamin C. The University shut down Pauling's research on Vitamin C and aging at the cellular level, but Bill continued to believe that aging at the cellular level was a fundamental locus of research. The universe of knowledge production (the emerging electronic discipline of library science and information management, in which he had graduate education and very early work experience as a systems analyst with IBM and Honeywell, while he was an undergraduate psychology major) was the conceptual field in which all this would be found - rather than in the natural world ('the body of knowledge' rather than the material world), so one could scope out and then focus back in to think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BUNCH

Joe Woodson - Rev. Joseph Woodson, PhD, Hospital Chaplain

Baptist minister and clinical psychologist Joe Woodson, PhD, the CPE director, retired at the end of Maynard's years of chaplaincy work at Boston State Hospital. His contributions to ministry and pastoral psychology in a mental health context were celebrated in Dr. Woodson's Cape Cod home with faculty and doctoral candidates of the Danielson Center for Pastoral Psychology at Boston University.

David F. Kingsley

David F. Kingsley, a retired Professor of Human Health Sciences, founded the New Hippocrates Health Institute in Boston and served as its President and chief Health Officer of its Health Clinic, which he operated at One Shipyard Way in Medford Square, Medford, MA. The Clerk of NHHI was Mary Ann Sparks, a social worker, and the NHHI Treasurer was Roy Frank Kipp, JD, an attorney who had facilitated the incorporation. The three were all age peers.

Maynard served on the Board of the New Hippocrates Health Institute and took a few ungraded, noncredit nutrition courses from Professor Kingsley, which he offered through NHHI. One of Maynard's tasks as an NHHI Board Member was to help Kingsley search for funding and sponsorship in the form of grants and contracts through a specialized library in Boston, Associated Grant Makers.

While the nutrition curriculum used and was based upon a standard modern nutrition text, which each student purchased (or was asked to purchase), NHHI favored raw vegan nutrition and held that uncooked plant foods are more hygienic and healthful than cooked plant foods. One eye-opener in the nutrition text which every nutrition student should know is that the professional practice of nutrition is concerned with appropriate foods, not only for the individual client being diagnosed and served through counsel and supervision, but also for the society and ecological economy where the client lives and works. Agricultural issues and their impacts on the world are important areas of study in human nutrition because they are the base, the context in which the supply of edible and advisable foods are drawn.

Before his becoming vegetarian, Professor David F. Kingsley had suffered three heart attacks and his sister, Norma Kingsley, had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, for which he has sought 'any and all lifestyle correctives.' In that quest for deeper scientific understanding, Professor Kingsley found and migrated toward and tried to apply to his sister a vegan, totally plant-based diet devoid of any animal-derived foodstuffs, and then later became an advocate of the raw vegan diet.

David Kingsley was from Rochester, New York, where he had served the State University of New York until his retirement. Before his becoming vegetarian then vegan, Professor David F. Kingsley had suffered three heart attacks and his sister, Norma Kingsley, had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, for which he has sought 'any and all lifestyle correctives.' In that quest for deeper scientific understanding, Professor Kingsley found and migrated toward and tried to apply to his sister a vegan, totally plant-based diet devoid of any animal-derived foodstuffs, and then later became an advocate of the raw vegan diet.

Professor Kingsley also set a good example of vegan diet, worked out daily, served for one two-year term on the Board of the Boston Vegetarian Society, and suggested the development of a regional organization, the New England Vegetarian Society (NEVS), which local vegetarian societies (such as Boston Vegetarian Society) could join, and which would offer regional, strategic, and associational advantages, including holding regional weekend-long vegetarian (read vegan) conferences and a vegetarian food fair. The most visionary NEVS was not developed in New England, and the name sounded strangely like NEAVS, the New England Anti-Vivisection Society.

Quips on Aging from Family and Friends

 * William J. Langan, PhD, Professor of Philosophy, CSU-East Bay, on describing the Philosophy Department:
 * "We're all graciously growing older together."

Anti-Aging Strategies
Vegetarians are not unique in their interest in longevity. Indeed, the rise of the modern animal advocacy movements evidence that not all vegetarians are concerned existentially for their ownhealth and longevity.

However, the concern over morbidity and mortality seems to be perennial. Governments gather and organize data on human morbidity and mortality in their jurisdictions.

Maynard, during his early years as a vegetarian, read a book on life extension and longevity by nonvegetarians Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach (ISBN 0-446-51229-X, Warner Books, 1982), who also authored The Life Extension Companion (Warner Books), The Life Extension Weight Loss Manual, and Freedom of Informed Choice: FDA v. Nutrient Supplements, (Common Sense Press, 1993). He then turned from their nonvegetarian approach to other, more vegetarian-friendly strategies for disease prevention and life extension (without ignoring other researchers and authors' work in longevity, natural health, and life extension.

Vegetarians and Vegans Who Have Gone Before

 * Walter "Killer" Kowalski (October 13, 1926 – August 30, 2008, at almost 82) - Władek (later Walter) "Killer" Kowalski, born Edward Władysław Spulnik, was a Polish-Canadian professional wrestler. Kowalski wrestled for numerous promotions during his career, including the NWA and WWF, and was a known heel wrestler. He held numerous championships including the WWWF World Tag Team Championship with Big John Studd billed as The Executioners and managed by Lou Albano. After retiring in 1977, Kowalski started a professional wrestling school in Malden, Massachusetts and trained many professional wrestlers, including Triple H, Chyna, Eddie Edwards, Kofi Kingston, Damien Sandow, Fandango, Brittany Brown, April Hunter, John Kronus, and Perry Saturn. Oddly enough, despite the profound character differences, he and Maynard took a liking to one another and became mutual friends in the context of practicing veganism and sharing a number of the same vegan friends and vegan dining out spots.  Later, Maynard moved to the city where Kowalski's wrestling studio was located, until it closed for financial reasons, later in Kowalski's life.  For those who liked his often friendly personality, it seems much harder to admit that Kowalski gives evidence to the image that 'vegetarians are bad' that some miscreants enjoy advancing.


 * Casey Kasem, (April 27, 1932 – June 15, 2014, at 82 ).

"Casey Kasem was a long-time vegan and animal advocate. However, he died with Parkinson's disease, though by some it was claimed that he was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, the suffering of which is often difficult to differentiate from that of Parkinson's. Due to his condition at that time, Kasem was no longer able to speak.."

"Casey Kasem was one of the celebrity promoters of the annual Great American Meatout (March 20th each year), sponsored by FARM (Farm Animal Rights Movement) of Bethesda, Maryland, and one year, ages ago, Maynard was National Program Director for the Great American Meatout. He was an American disc jockey, radio personality and actor, best known for being the host of the music radio programs American Top 40, American Top 20, and American Top 10 from 1970 until his retirement in 2009, and for providing the voice of Norville 'Shaggy' Rogers in the Scooby-Doo franchise from 1969 to 1997, and again from 2002 until 2009."


 * Rosa Parks (Born Feb. 4, 1913; Died Oct. 24, 2005, at 92, despite a very difficult and stressful life) Civil rights activist credited with starting the US civil rights movement; author; US Medal of Freedom recipient (1996); Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize recipient

"For over forty years, I've been vegetarian. Growing up, my family had little money—I had health problems early in life because of poor nutrition. Eating healthy is a priority for me." Rosa Parks, "Interview: Rosa Parks on the Power of Love," in Positive Energy: 10 Extraordinary Prescriptions for Transforming Fatigue, Stress and Fear into Vibrance, Strength and Love," by Judith Orloff, MD, 2004

"Parks maintains a vegetarian diet. Among her favorite vegetables are broccoli, greens, sweet potatoes and string beans." "Rosa Parks: Did You Know?," Cincinnati Enquirer website (accessed Dec. 21, 2011)


 * Sylvester Graham (Born July 5, 1794; Died Sep. 11, 1851, at a mere 57, despite the proverbial longevity of Protestant pastors, specifically Lutherans and Presbyterians ) Inventor of the graham cracker; Presbyterian minister.

"The first vegetarian society was formed in 1847 in England. Three years later, Rev. Sylvester Graham, the inventor of Graham crackers, co-founded the American Vegetarian Society. Graham was a Presbyterian minister and his followers, called Grahamites, obeyed his instructions for a virtuous life: vegetarianism, temperance, abstinence, and frequent bathing." Claire Suddath, "A Brief History of Veganism," www.time.com, Oct. 30, 2008

"Flesh-meats average about thirty-five per cent of nutritious matter, while rice, wheat, and several kinds of pulse (such as lentils, peas, and beans) afford from eighty to ninety-five per cent; potatoes afford twenty-five per cent of nutritious matter. So that one pound of rice contains more nutritious matter than two pounds and a half of flesh-meat; three pounds of whole meal bread contain more than six pounds of flesh, and three pounds of potatoes more than two pounds of flesh."

Sylvester Graham, quoted by Howard Williams in The Ethics of Diet: a Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-Eating, 1883


 * Fred Rogers ("Mister Rogers") - Frederick "Fred" McFeely Rogers  (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003, at only 75) was an American educator, Presbyterian minister, songwriter, author, and television host. Rogers was most famous for creating and hosting Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (1968–2001), which featured his gentle, soft-spoken personality and directness to his audiences.

"Initially educated to be a minister, Rogers was displeased with the way television addressed children and made an effort to change this when he began to write for and perform on local Pittsburgh-area shows dedicated to youth. WQED developed his own show in 1968 and it was distributed nationwide by Eastern Educational Television Network. Over the course of three decades on television, Fred Rogers became an indelible American icon of children's entertainment and education, as well as a symbol of compassion, patience, and morality. He was also known for his advocacy of various public causes. His testimony before a lower court in favor of fair use recording of television shows to play at another time (now known as time shifting) was cited in a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Betamax case, and he gave now-famous testimony to a U.S. Senate committee, advocating government funding for children's television."

Rogers received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, some forty honorary degrees, and a Peabody Award. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame, was recognized by two Congressional resolutions, and was ranked No. 35 among TV Guide's Fifty Greatest TV Stars of All Time. Several buildings and artworks in Pennsylvania are dedicated to his memory, and the Smithsonian Institution displays one of his trademark sweaters as a "Treasure of American History".


 * Thomas Alva Edison (Born Feb. 11, 1847; Died Oct. 18, 1931, at 84-1/2) US inventor and entrepreneur; inventions include the modern incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, and the motion picture camera; named on 1,093 US patents

"During the recent illness, from mastoiditis, of Mr. Thos. Alva Edison, the famous inventor ceased using meat and went for a thorough course of vegetarianism. Mr. Edison was so pleased with the change of diet that, now he has regained his normal health, he continues to renounce meat in all its forms." "Mr. Edison a Vegetarian," Vegetarian Times, June 1908, available at the International Vegetarian Union (IVU) website (accessed Dec. 6, 2011)

"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages." Thomas Alva Edison, quoted by Michael J. Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott in Innovate like Edison: the Success System of America's Greatest Inventor, 2007

"In early July 1988, the word went out on the streets of Orange [NJ] that the Edison lab would pay 25 cents for every stray dog delivered to its door. Neighborhood boys led the roundup, and the lab soon had more than enough subjects for [Edison employee] Brown's experiments...

...Edison wasn't squeamish about zapping animals with electricity. Brown's dog experiments might have reminded Edison of the Rat Paralyser he had built twenty years earlier to rid the telegraph office of rodents...

The planned execution of Topsy [an elephant kept at Coney Island's Luna Park Zoo] promised an even more stunning visual spectacle, one that Edison couldn't resist. Topsy's killing was a splendid opportunity to capture powerful images that would not only astonish viewers but also remind them of the killing power of alternating current [AC power, rival technology to Edison's DC (direct current)]. On the day of Topsy's execution, Edison's cameraman was given a front-row view of the proceedings. The resulting minute and a half of film, Electrocuting an Elephant, would prove to be one of Edison's longest and most arresting motion pictures to date." Tom McNichol, AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War, 2006


 * Albert Einstein (Born Mar. 14, 1879; Died Apr. 18, 1955, at 76) German-US physicist; author of the special and general theories of relativity; Nobel prize recipient

"Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet[*], I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle. Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind." Albert Einstein (*December 27, 1930, prior to adopting a vegetarian diet), quoted on the International Vegetarian Union website (accessed Dec. 7, 2011)

"When you buy a piece of land to plant your cabbage and apples, you first have to drain it; that will kill all forms of animal and plant life that exist in that water. Later you would have to kill all the worms and caterpillars etc. that would eat your plants. If you must avoid all this killing on moral grounds, you will in the end have to kill yourself, all for the sake of leaving alive those creatures who have no such conception of higher moral principles." Albert Einstein, quoted posthumously in Vegetarisches Universum, Dec. 1957, cited by Alice Calaprice in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, 2011

"So I am living without fats, without meat, without fish, but am feeling quite well this way. It always seems to me that man was not born to be a carnivore." Albert Einstein (1954), quoted in Science, Worldviews and Education: from the Journal Science & Education, 2009


 * Franz Kafka (Born July 3, 1883; Died June 3, 1924) Czech born, German-language novelist and short story writer; source of the term "Kafkaesque," meaning nightmarishly bureaucratic in the vein of Kafka's novels The Trial and The Metamorphosis

"One day while in Berlin, Franz Kafka went to visit the city’s famous aquarium. According to his friend and biographer Max Brod, Kafka, gazing into the illuminated tanks, addressed the fish directly. 'Now at last I can look at you in peace,' he told them. 'I don’t eat you anymore.'

Kafka... became what Brod calls a strenger Vegetarianer—a strict vegetarian..."

Elizabeth Kolbert, "Flesh of Your Flesh," New Yorker, Nov. 9, 2009

"There is no doubt in my mind that a draft alone doesn't cause toothache in healthy teeth... And if the deterioration of the teeth wasn't actually due to inadequate care, then it was due, as with me, to eating meat. One sits at the table laughing and talking... and meanwhile tiny shreds of meat between the teeth produce germs of decay and fermentation, no less than a dead rat squashed between two stones.

Meat is the one thing that is so stringy that it can be removed only with great difficulty, and even then not at once and not completely, unless one's teeth are like those of a beast of prey—pointed, set wide apart, designed for the purpose of tearing meat to shreds."

Franz Kafka, quoted in Disgust: The Theory and History of a Strong Sensation by Winfried Menninghaus, 2003


 * Plutarch of Chaeronea in Boeotia (Born circa 45 AD; Died circa 120 AD, at a mere 75) Greek biographer, essayist and historian; author of Parallel Lives (Bioi paralleloi) and Moralia (or Ethica)

"For my part, I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man who did so touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds..." Plutarch of Chaeronea in Boeotia, quoted in John Dillon, "Pythagorean Influences in Plutarch's Philosophical Upbringing," in On the Daimonion of Socrates: Human Liberation, Divine Guidance & Philosophy, Ed. Heinz-Gunther Nesselrath, 2010

"If, in spite of all this, you still affirm that you were intended by nature for such a diet, to begin with, kill yourself what you wish to eat—but do it yourself with your own natural weapons, without the use of butcher's knife, or axe, or club. No; as the wolves and lions and bears themselves slay all they feed on, so, in like manner, do you kill the cow or ox with a grip of your jaw, or the pig with your teeth, or a hare or a lamb by falling upon and rending them there and then. Having gone through all these preliminaries, then sit down to your repast. If, however, you wait until the living and intelligent existence be deprived of life, and if it would disgust you to have to rend out the heart and shed the life-blood of your victim, why, I ask, in the very face of Nature, and in despite of her, do you feed on beings endowed with sentient life?" Plutarch of Chaeronea in Boeotia, On the Eating of Flesh, reprinted in Howard Williams, The Ethics of Diet: a Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-Eating, 1883


 * Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Born Aug. 30, 1797; Died Feb. 1, 1851) English Romantic novelist; author of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818, revised 1831); wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley

"...[S]eventeen year old Mary [Shelley] was pregnant, with a baby conceived earlier in the summer. The combination of pregnancy and the vegetarian diet insisted upon by [her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley (who had praised vegetarianism...) made her ill and sleepy." Daisy Hay, Young Romantics: the Tangled Lives of English Poetry's Greatest Generation, 2010

"Frankenstein has received an enormous amount of critical attention over the past two decades from feminists and other critics, all of whom have neglected to explore the vegetarian themes in the novel. Frankenstein's creature is a vegetarian. [Author Carol J.] Adams says: 'The Creature's vegetarianism not only confirms its inherent, original benevolence, but conveys Mary Shelley's precise rendering of themes articulated by a group of her contemporaries whom I call 'Romantic vegetarians.'... Shelley grew up in an intellectual environment in which vegetarianism was much discussed and often adopted by such writers and activists as John Frank Newton, Joseph Ritson, and her father, William Godwin. Shelley's husband, Percy, authored two vegetarian texts, A Vindication of Natural Diet and Queen Mab, and the Romantics with whom they kept company viewed radical politics and other unorthodox notions such as Republicanism as going hand-in-glove with their vegetarianism." "Extract from a review of The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol Adams," originally published in Environmental ethics, Volume 14, 1992, available at the International Vegetarian Union website (accessed Dec. 8, 2011)


 * John Harvey Kellogg, MD (Born Feb. 26, 1852; Died Dec. 14, 1943) US physician and health-food pioneer; co-developer of Kellogg's Corn Flakes

"Vegetarian animals are longer lived, have greater endurance, greater freedom from disease and greater intelligence than the flesh-eating class, and the same is true of human beings...

...[M]eat, on the average, requires two or three times as long for digestion as do fruits and farinaceous [starchy] foodstuffs such as apples, rice, etc... Boiled rice digests in one hour; roast pork requires five and a half hours.

...Horsley, the famous English brain surgeon, showed experimentally that the extractives of meat are a paralyzing poison to the brain. After trephining [removing a circular piece of bone from the skull] a monkey and locating a motor area on the surface of the brain, he applied gentle electric stimulation. The result was the vigorous contraction of the muscles of the limbs controlled by the particular nerve cells under experiment. He then applied a few drops of bouillon. Instantly, the action of the muscles ceased. No amount of stimulation produced the slightest movement. The brain cells were paralyzed. Meat is not a true stimulant. It renders the brain and nerves sluggish. After hearty meat eating, mental dullness is often very pronounced. The meat eater is not only irritable, but stupid and sullen..." John Harvey Kellogg, MD, The Natural Diet of Man, 1923


 * Upton Sinclair (Born Sep. 20, 1878; Died Nov. 25, 1968) Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Jungle (1906); social reform activist

"...Upton Sinclair was one of [co-developer of Corn Flakes breakfast cereal Dr. John Harvey] Kellogg's converts to vegetarianism… The Jungle is the most powerful depiction of the horrors of animal slaughter in U.S. history... Despite the novel's passages sympathetic to the plight of cattle and hogs [see except below], Sinclair apparently did not intend to espouse vegetarianism as a solution to the problems in the meat industry. A life-long food faddist, he apparently tried vegetarianism for a few years, gave it up in 1911, and moved on to other diets... In his autobiography, Sinclair says that 'for fifty-six years I have been ridiculed for a passage in The Jungle that deals with the moral claims of dying hogs—which passage was intended as hilarious farce. The New York Evening Post described it as nauseous hogwash'—and refused to publish my letter of explanation.'" Wilson J. Warren, Tied to the Great Packing Machine: the Midwest and Meatpacking, 2007

"[T]here was a great iron wheel, about twenty feet in circumference, with rings here and there along its edge... [I]t began slowly to revolve, and then the men upon each side of it sprang to work. They had chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the other end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel. So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and borne aloft.

At the same instant the ear was assailed by a most terrifying shriek; the visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back. The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing—for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back... And meantime another was swung up, and then another, and another, until there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and kicking in frenzy—and squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous to the ear-drums; one feared there was too much sound for the room to hold—that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack...

It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated... And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests—and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it..."
 * George Bernard Shaw (Born July 26, 1856; Died Nov. 2, 1950, at 94) Irish playwright, novelist and social critic; cofounder of the London School of Economics; Nobel Prize for literature recipient (1925)

"Less than a century ago, even the celebrated playwright and wit George Bernard Shaw, a vegetarian for the last 70 years of his long life, was considered a 'crank' by some, though it mattered little to him. When asked in 1898 why he was a vegetarian, Shaw had a typically outspoken answer: 'Oh, come! That boot is on the other leg. Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that.'" "Another Look at Vegetarianism," Encyclopaedia Britannica: Advocacy for Animals website, May 21, 2007

"My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed, not by mourning coaches, but by herds of oxen, sheep, swine, flocks of poultry, and a small travelling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarves in honor to the man who perished rather than eat his fellow-creatures. It will be, with the single exception of Noah's Ark, the most remarkable thing of the kind yet seen." George Bernard Shaw, "Wagner and Vegetables," The Academy, Oct. 15, 1898

"While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?" George Bernard Shaw, quoted by P.S. Sri in "Shaw (1856-1950), Gandhi (1869-1948) and Vegetarianism," The George Bernard Shaw Society

"Animals are my friends... and I don’t eat my friends." George Bernard Shaw, quoted by P.S. Sri in "Shaw (1856-1950), Gandhi (1869-1948) and Vegetarianism," The George Bernard Shaw Society


 * Leo Tolstoy (aka Lev Nikolayevich, Count Tolstoy, and other variations) (Born Sep. 9, 1829; Died Nov. 20, 1910, at 81) Russian novelist; author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina; religious and political essayist; social reformer

"'Count Lyof N. Tolstoi, the eminent Russian novelist, essayist and thinker, has been for many years a Vegetarian, eschewing flesh, fish and fowl, eggs, butter and lard, and neither drinking wine nor smoking tobacco. His diet consists of bread, porridge, fruit and vegetables. In an article which he contributed to the New Review in 1892, he writes :—"

'The Vegetarian Movement ought to fill with gladness the souls of those who have at heart the realization of God's kingdom upon earth, not because Vegetarianism itself is such an important step towards the realization of this kingdom (all real steps are equally important or unimportant), but because it serves as a criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of man is genuine and sincere...'" Charles W. Forward, Fifty Years of Food Reform: A History of the Vegetarian Movement in England, 1898

"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral." Leo Tolstoy, "Letter to Dr. Eugen Heinrich Schmitt," The Novels and Other Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi – Volume 20: Essays, Letters, and Miscellanies, 1902

"It appears from Corsali’s letter [Andrea Corsali’s letter to Giuliano de’ Medici] that Leonardo ate no meat, but lived entirely on vegetables, thus forestalling modern vegetarians by several centuries." Eugene Muntz, Leonardo da Vinci: Artist, Thinker, and Man of Science, 1898 "…The mere idea of permitting the existence of unnecessary suffering, still more that of taking life, was abhorrent to [Da Vinci]. Vasari tells, as an instance of his love of animals, how when in Florence he passed places where birds were sold he would frequently take them from their cages with his own hand, and having paid the sellers the price that was asked would let them fly away in the air, thus giving them back their liberty." Edward MacCurdy, The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci, 1928
 * Leonardo da Vinci (Born Apr. 15, 1452; Died May 2, 1519 at a mere 67) Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect and engineer; artwork includes the Last Supper (1495–98) and the Mona Lisa (circa 1503–06).

"Unfortunately, there is a quote attributed to da Vinci that has been in several books and magazine articles as well as on vegetarian web sites which has been falsely attributed. It is as follows: 'I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.' The quote... was from a fiction novel (which did put into da Vinci’s mouth some actual quotes) by Dimitri [Dmitri] Merejkowski..."

David Hurwitz, "Leonardo da Vinci's Ethical Vegetarianism," International Vegetarian Union website, July 19, 2002


 * Benjamin Franklin (Born Jan. 17, 1706; Died Apr. 17, 1790) US inventor, diplomat, scientist, etc.; Founding Father of the United States

"When about 16 years of age I happened to meet with a book, written by one Tryon [vegetarianism advocate Thomas Tryon], recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it. My brother, being yet unmarried, did not keep house, but boarded himself and his apprentices in another family. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chid for my singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon's manner of preparing some of his dishes, such as boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty pudding, and a few others, and then proposed to my brother, that if he would give me, weekly, half the money he paid for my board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I could save half what he paid me... [D]espatching presently my light repast, which often was no more than a bisket or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry-cook's, and a glass of water... I made the greater progress, from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking...

...[I]n my first voyage from Boston, being becalm'd off Block Island, our people set about catching cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not eating animal food, and on this occasion consider'd, with my master Tryon, the taking every fish as a kind of unprovoked murder, since none of them had, or ever could do us any injury that might justify the slaughter. All this seemed very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great lover of fish, and, when this came hot out of the frying-pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc'd some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought I, 'If you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you.' So I din'd upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do." The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 1793


 * Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Mahatma (great soul) (Born Oct. 2, 1869; Died Jan. 30, 1948) Indian spiritual and political leader; philosophical and religious writer; collected works total more than 50,000 pages in 100 volumes

"...[W]e should all be Vegetarians. For why should it be otherwise when [British physician] Sir Henry Thompson calls it 'a vulgar error' to suppose that flesh-foods are indispensable for our sustenance, and the most eminent physiologists declare that fruit is the natural food of man... Muscular Vegetarians demonstrate the superiority of their diet by pointing out that the peasantry of the world are practically Vegetarians, and that the strongest and most useful animal, the horse, is a Vegetarian, while the most ferocious and practically useless animal, the lion, is a carnivore..." Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, "The Superiority of Vegetarianism" (letter to the National Mercury, Feb. 3, 1896), quoted in Ethical Vegetarianism: from Pythagoras to Peter Singer, Eds. Kerry S. Walters and Lisa Portmess, 1999

"...I received a letter to the effect that Kasturbai [Gandhi's wife] was worse, too weak to sit up in bed, and had once become unconscious. The doctor knew that he might not, without my consent, give her wines or meat. So he telephoned to me at Johannesburg for permission to give her beef tea. I replied saying I could not grant the permission, but that, if she was in a condition to express her wish in the matter she might be consulted, and she was free to do as she liked...

I took the train for Durban the next day, and met the doctor who quietly broke this news to me: 'I had already given Mrs. Gandhi beef tea when I telephoned you.'

'Now, doctor, I call this a fraud,' said I...

'Doctor, tell me what you propose to do now. I would never allow my wife to be given meat or beef, even if the denial meant her death, unless of course she desired to take it.'

...I next spoke to Kasturbai herself... I told her what had passed between the doctor and myself. She gave a resolute reply: 'I will not take beef tea. It is a rare thing in this world to be born as a human being, and I would far rather die in your arms than pollute my body with such abominations.'

I pleaded with her. I told her that she was not bound to follow me... But she was adamant. 'No,' said she, 'pray remove me [from the doctor's residence] at once.'

I was delighted..." Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, 1927-1929


 * Coretta Scott King (Born Apr. 27, 1927; Died Jan. 30, 2006, at 78) Civil rights, women's rights and anti-war activist; wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.; founding president and chief executive officer of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change; soprano vocalist

"Coretta King, 78, chose homeopathic treatments to fight her disease [cancer], refusing to believe doctors who said it would be life-ending. In her later years, she had become a vegan, abstaining from meat and dairy products." Darryl Fears and Hamil R. Harris, "Coretta Scott King's Four Children Speak of Her Illness, Final Days," Washington Post, Feb. 6, 2006

"...I was in Dr. King's house in Atlanta providing food service to Coretta Scott King. I knew this was no coincidence. Mrs. King had given up meat at the urging of Dexter, her son, and had fallen into the thinking that 'going raw' was what she needed to do to get healthier. I was the second or so in a progression to provide her with raw food..." Adama Maweja, "The Fulfillment of the Movement," in Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society, Ed. A. Breeze Harper, 2010


 * Steve Jobs (Born Feb. 24, 1955; Died Oct. 5, 2011) Cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc.; inventor, named on 323 US patents; former owner of Pixar Animation Studios; founder of NeXT Corporation; National Medal of Technology recipient (1985)

"[A] book that deeply influenced Jobs during his freshman year was Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé, which extolled the personal and planetary benefits of vegetarianism. 'That's when I swore off meat pretty much for good,' he recalled. But the book also reinforced his tendency to embrace extreme diets, which included purges, fasts, or eating only one or two foods, such as carrots or apples, for weeks on end.

Jobs and [his friend Daniel] Kottke became serious vegetarians during their freshman year. 'Steve got into it even more than I did,' said Kottke. 'He was living off Roman Meal cereal.'... There is a story about Steve turning orange from eating so many carrots, and there is some truth to that.' Friends remember him having, at times, a sunset-like orange hue.

Jobs's dietary habits became even more obsessive when he read Mucusless Diet Healing System by Arnold Ehret, an early twentieth-century German-born nutrition fanatic. He believed in eating nothing but fruit and starchless vegetables, which he said prevented the body from forming harmful mucus, and he advocated cleansing the body regularly through prolonged fasts. That meant the end of even Roman Meal cereal—or any bread, grains, or milk. Jobs began warning friends of the mucus dangers lurking in their bagels. 'I got into it in my typical nutso way,' he said. At one point he and Kottke went for an entire week eating only apples, and then Jobs began to try even purer fasts. He started with two-day fasts, and eventually tried to stretch them to a week or more, breaking them carefully with large amounts of water and leafy vegetables. 'After a week you start to feel fantastic,' he said. 'You get a ton of vitality from not having to digest all this food. I was in great shape. I felt I could get up and walk to San Francisco [from Reed College in Portland, OR] whenever I wanted.'" Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs, 2011

"In 2003... a CT scan and other tests found a cancerous tumor in [Jobs'] pancreas. Doctors urged him to have an operation to remove the tumor, but Mr. Jobs put it off and instead tried a vegan diet, juices, herbs, acupuncture and other alternative remedies.

Nine months later, the tumor had grown. Only then did he agree to surgery, during which his doctors found that the cancer had spread to his liver..." Denise Grady, "A Tumor Is No Clearer in Hindsight," www.nytimes.com, Nov. 11, 2011

Did They Die Too Young?
In August 1995, at the 8th International Vegan Festival in San Diego, where Maynard was the Program Manager, Dr. Michael Klaper commented on how a number of healthy-seeming vegans had died in their youth. He had been puzzled about this curiosity, since he didn't have evidence to explain anything unusual. The short lesson is that we are looking at something very complex.

In Youth
Maynard was often tended by much older family members and by close elderly friends of his family. The 80th birthday party of one of those close elderly friends of his family was quite a watershed event in his attention to aging. That close elderly friend of his family died a few years after reaching 90. He often discussed Grandma Moses, Methuselah, and other very old Biblical figures with that octogenarian from his family's local church.

Church experiences opened his interest in human aging and the ways it was understood differently across different cultures. One church member noted that there's no category of 'teenage' in the Bible, but other sequences of aging are listed in various passages.

A great many elders attended the church services, and watching their gradual decline was noteworthy. What was missing, he later mused, was a clear, thoughtful, and expert observation and (though confidential) designation of what was taking place in front of the community. That may have led to a formal study of gerontology (his mother later pursued a graduate degree in gerontology) rather than his seeing it earlier as a mere curiosity, an irremediable fact of living which can be slowed or hastened, but hardly impacted with much certainty.

Middle Age
Depending on one's views of longevity, 'middle age' could come in the late 20s and maybe last until about the early or late 60s. Some think of the Seventies (70s) as 'the new middle age' (but if one begins to say, "I recall how, during the Middle Ages, we did x or y" s/he will be 'dated' - and not in a romantic way).

According to Collins Dictionary, this is "... usually considered to occur approximately between the ages of 40 and 60". The current edition of the Oxford English Dictionary gives a similar definition but with a shorter span: "The period of life between young adulthood and old age, now usually regarded as between about forty-five and sixty." The US Census lists middle age as including both the age categories 35 to 44 and 45 to 54, while prominent psychologist Erik Erikson saw it ending a little later and defines middle adulthood as between 40 and 65. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the standard diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association, used to define middle age as 40–60, but as of Edition IV (1994) revised upwards the definition of 'middle age' to 45–65.

Boards

 * Campaign for Aging Research (C.A.R.), Ann Arbor, Michigan       - 2009-present [C.A.R. was founded in 2008]   Currently Vice President of Ethics
 * Mission Hill Health Movement (MHHM), Boston, Massachusetts

How Long Could Optimized Vegetarians (and Vegans) Live?
We can see that vegetarians don't all live past 100; indeed, few of the celebrity vegetarians have lived that long. What accounts for short lives in some vegetarians and longer lives in others, despite epidemiological evidence that morbidity and mortality risk factors are reduced in populations consistently practicing plant-based vegetarian and vegan diets?

Do dietary factors trump all other aging-related factors, as some practicing vegetarians seem to be thinking, according to informal interviews? It's evident that no common vegetarian dietary practice is overwhelming and that recidivism within the 'community' is not uncommon. In Maynard's experience during his first decade as a vegetarian then vegan, he found significant numbers of former vegetarians who 'had personal stories to tell' (which all seemed to be 'unscientific' and single case stories, yet very real stories of a thinking person's intelligent guess about her or his condition: did s/he feel better on whatever type of diet s/he was practicing and calling 'vegetarian'?

Is there no discernible longevity benefit?

No single perspective on that issue is found among relevant researchers looking systematically at the variable vegetarian communities. At a Boston Vegetarian Society potluck seminar at the Boston SDA Temple during the late 1980s or early 1990s, then-BVS-President George H. Eastman, EdD, PhD, lectured on then-current evidence that vegetarian populations do NOT enjoy longevity advantages over nonvegetarians. Dr. Eastman now has been an octogenarian for several years and managed to complete and publish his autobiography (not cited here).

Some die young

This same issue of unrealized longevity benefits has bothered both Dr. Michael Klaper and Dr. Michael Greger. In August 1995, Dr. Michael Klaper publicly expressed his shock at the early deaths in their twenties of various young vegan acquaintances. Dr. Michael Greger has repeatedly taught that a congeries of confluent issues impacts the overall health and longevity outcomes and that applying carefully-crafted evidence-based 'tweaks' (using ground flaxseed for short-chain omega-3 fatty acids, progressively avoiding common foodborne toxins, etc.) will overcome any practice-related challenges, allowing the natural salubrious advantages of vegan diets to benefit well-schooled, well-trained vegan practitioners. If some DO die young, do any of US know why? Well, we're not researching them, nor are we privy to their clinical files, which are confidential. They were confidential before HIPAA, and they're even more confidential now. Seventh Day Adventist institutions, such as Loma Linda University School of Public Health, do some community-based research on practicing vegetarians who are SDA church members, yet how valuable to non-abstinent non-churchgoing vegetarians and vegans is such research?

Issues Other than Longevity
If there's evidence for longer lifespans for vegetarians, the organized communities of vegetarian practice ought to adopt fiduciary responsibilities for counseling their vegetarian and vegan practitioners to plan financially for enhanced longevity. Living longer requires ongoing available of financial resources unless someone else is paying the bills. Even with that sponsored scenario, one's fiscal freedoms are notably reduced if one has little or no control over discretionary income.


 * Middle-aged adults often show visible signs of aging such as loss of skin elasticity and graying of the hair.
 * Physical fitness usually wanes, with a 5–10 kg (10–20 lb) accumulation of body fat, reduction in aerobic performance and a decrease in maximal heart rate.
 * Strength and flexibility also decrease throughout middle age.
 * Individual human beings (as all animals) age at differing rates; significant differences in accumulated aging is evident across individuals of the same age.
 * Both male and female fertility declines with advancing age. Advanced maternal age increases the risk of a child being born with some disorders such as Down syndrome.
 * Advanced paternal age significantly increases the risk of miscarriage, as well as possibly slightly increasing the risk of Down syndrome, schizophrenia, autism, decreased intellectual capacity, and bipolar disorder.
 * Most women will experience menopause, which ends natural fertility, in their mid 40s or early 50s. However, fertility in women starts to decline in the 20s. Ten years before menopause, fertility is already very low.
 * In developed countries, yearly mortality begins to increase more noticeably from age 41 onwards, mainly due to age-related health problems such as heart disease and cancer. However, in the world's industrialized nations, the majority of middle-age persons of all backgrounds and practices can expect to live into old age.
 * Life expectancy in developing nations is much lower, and the risk of death at all ages is higher.

Coursework Related to Aging Concerns
Maynard has taken and tutored several courses on working with elders and caring for elders with age-associated conditions:
 * Abuse Prevention in Persons with Dementia: The Basics
 * Alzheimer's Disease (AD)
 * Breaking the Chain of Infection
 * Client Behaviors: Assessment and Interventions in the Resident with Dementia
 * Coding and Documentation of ADLs (3 iterations, in March and December 2013 and May 2014)
 * Creating a Personalized Activities Program
 * Customer Service Strategies
 * Elder Justice Act
 * Isolation Precautions: A Lesson in Infection Control
 * Nursing Care of the Resident with Advanced Alzheimer's Disease
 * Overview of Mental Illness in Older Adults
 * Right on Target: Respecting Patient's Rights (3 iterations, once in March 2013 and twice in December 2013)
 * Sexual Harassment
 * Understanding Bloodborne Pathogens
 * Vulnerable Adult Protection