I’ve just given a keynote on Intel’s healthcare R&D at The Wellcome Trust on Euston Road, London. It seemed to go well enough. We got to visit some of the exhibition areas afterwards in the newly refurbished venue (which is well worth visiting or dropping in to. Great bookshop and cafe. Free wifi.) One exhbition is called The Heart, and runs til mid September. Well worth a visit, for an ecclectic collection of heart related sounds, organs, pictures, photography and ‘things’.
I was captivated by this infogram and the equation for lifespan which it presents.
It turns out that this equation produces a lifespan for humans of 31 years. Whilst the equation works out more accurately for the other animal in the example, this is, thankfully, not the case for humans. Turns out that medical and other social and technological developments have allowed humans to extend their lifespan by some 40-60 years. A reminder of what humans can achieve in shaping their own historical or biographical destinies in the face of biological reality and of course, a reminder that econonomic, medical and other circumstances ties people in many parts of the world closer to the outcome of this simple equation of life.