Scientists: 'Castration is the key to a longer life'

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/25/castration_long_life/

by iProject • 14 years ago

14 8 14 years ago

theregister.co.uk

daviddi• 14 years ago

Isn't that woman's fault?

reasonattlm• 14 years ago

Over at the Gerontology Research Group list, epidemiologist S. Jay Olshansky commented:

"It was quite a silly story. The authors misunderstood the evolutionary theory of senescence. Furthermore, they failed to account for other behavioral attributes of the folks being studied. I don't understand how that paper passed through peer review."

There are a lot of theories floating around regarding gender differences in longevity; that we cannot definitively say why the difference exists is a good example of the tremendous complexity of the intersection of metabolism, genetics, and aging:

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Afightaging.org+...

But read the paper - it's open access:

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2812...

For my money, I'd wager that their methodology for finding life spans in the genealogy data for the 81 out of 385 mentioned eunuchs (and/or the intrinsic structure of that data) is predisposed towards selecting longer-lived individuals.

zaptheimpaler• 14 years ago

>"It was quite a silly story..."

Man, I sure hope so.

microtherion• 14 years ago

I'm sure there needs to be considerable discussion of the methodology and conclusions of this paper, but in the mean time, it's going to be an useful paper to tweak people touting the health benefits of circumcision (based on research that is not all that indisputable either).

"Why cut off the tip and gain a few months of life expectation, if you could cut it ALL off and gain DECADES"

bmcorser• 14 years ago

"... when eunuchs were less unique"

dan00• 14 years ago

As someone who has suffered from the absence of testosterone: castration? brilliant idea!

gadders• 14 years ago

Bollocks to that.

gte910h• 14 years ago

They don't seem to have controlled for daily activity, only socio-economic status.

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2812...

I am guessing there are confounding co-factors that make this research woefully inadequate and not useful.

Scientists: 'Castration is the key to a longer life'

Related Stories