FROM THE EDITORS March 5, 2007 Issue

DO WE THINK OF MOBILITY AND FLEXIBILITY AS PHYSICAL PHENOMENA? OR, ARE THEY MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL ENDOWMENTS?

TOWARD A CHANCE-FREE LIFE EXPECTANCY

ADVERTISING PLAYS A USEFUL ROLE in connecting customers with products and services. But if you were to do a "reverse TiVo" this evening—recording a program-free string of commercials, instead of vice versa—you might think that Americans, and especially the country's older generations, live in a very risky world. Thirty-second spots for auto insurance project the likelihood of accidents. Some investment service ads predict untimely death. Cosmetics advertising plays on chances for recapturing lost youth.

Prescription drug ads push even more fear-of-frailty buttons—mental images of weakening bones and painful joints, deficient hormones and balky bowels, and unsavory scenarios for just about every other organ and bodily system. All because—so goes the underlying theme—we grow more vulnerable as we grow older.

Apparently, no one has convinced turtles and tortoises that aging requires bodily deterioration. Perhaps you heard recently about the Galapagos tortoise named Harriet, who lived to the quite reasonable earth-age of 176. "Behind such biblical longevity," The New York Times reported, "is the turtle's stubborn refusal to senesce—to grow old.... Researchers lately have been astonished to discover that in contrast to nearly every other animal studied, a turtle's organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time" (Natalie Angier, "All but Ageless, Turtles Face Their Biggest Threat: Humans," December 12, 2006).

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