Quote

We've gone from a preponderance of acute and infectious disease as a source of premature death to chronic diseases, which are the preponderance of the burden of illness in most of the world. That puts a much higher premium on the prevention of chronic disease than ever in history.

We are paying the price for living longer, collecting degenerative diseases along the way. Cancer is only one. Others are heart and brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinsons.

People use so much more health care when they live longer.

We are living on average today 34 years longer than our great-grandparents did.

I believe we can prevent or delay most disease until the 9th or 10th decade. The goal is to prevent anything that can affect your quality of life prior to those years! By the time many of us get to the 9th or 10th decade, who knows where the new medical and science will take us? I am an optimist!

In health care today, we spend most of the dollars - in terms of treating disease - in the last two years of a person's life.

The way that we are going after ageing, I think, is a problem. The modern medical model is basically designed to attack one disease at a time. Independent of all other diseases and independent of the basic process of ageing itself.

The key to the future in an aging society is not found in increasing just our life span; we need to increase our health span at the same time.

We have grown accustomed to the wonders of clean water, indoor plumbing, laser surgery, genetic engineering, artificial joints, replacement body parts, and the much longer lives that accompany them. Yet we should remember that the vast majority of humans ever born died before the age of 10 from an infectious disease.