James Vaupel
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James W. Vaupel, Ph.D. (born May 2, 1945 in New York, United States) is the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany (although he is an American) and an early leading proponent of the idea of mortality deceleration (that is, that the mortality or death rate slows down at the highest ages)[1] as applied to the human life span. He was commissioned to found the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in 1996. He is also a research professor at Duke University, and is the director of its Population, Policy, Aging and Research Center. He has been involved in many endeavors and published over 20 books.[2]
In some ways, Vaupel has posited that the human life span will extend naturally, even without life-extension intervention from humans. This is a slow process that has been ongoing (for example, no one lived to 100 years old 20,000 years ago, but they do now).
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[edit] Vaupel as organizer
Dr. Vaupel has been instrumental in the emerging field of research into supercentenarians[3] as a population subset. Because his ideas required finding humans near the margins of the human life span, and because the number of persons aged 110+ in a single European nation was so small, Vaupel began the push in 2000 by inviting experts from around the world to meet in international workshops[4] and to found the International Database on Longevity.[5]
[edit] Vaupel as theorist
Vaupel has been instrumental in advancing a paradigm shift of ideas when it comes to the intersection of aging and demography. As recently as 1981, researchers such as Fries et al advocated a 'maximum human life span' of '110' years. In 1951, Vincent advocated a maximum life span of '107' years, using an exponential mortality model. Yet by the 1980s, it was clear that humans were advancing beyond these proposed 'barriers'. In response, Vaupel and others (such as Dr. Bernard Jeune of Denmark) advanced a new proposition: that the human life span is not fixed, but is a function of life expectancy and sample size. In particular, he and S. Jay Olshansky have had a disagreement about what this means in terms of future projections of the human life span.[6] It should be noted that Vaupel's ideas of 'demographic life extension' are concurrent with, not the same as, those who advocate a human intervention on a biological basis as the base for life extension.
[edit] References
- ^ Hell No, We Won't Go! Surprising demographic trends raise a tough question: Will the elderly live so long that society can't cope? - July 19, 1999
- ^ Amazon.com: James W. Vaupel: Books
- ^ Emergence of Supercentenarians in Low Mortality Countries
- ^ Past Workshops
- ^ International Database on Longevity
- ^ Staying Alive | Aging | DISCOVER Magazine
