The Reliability Theory Of Aging

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Betterhumans is giving deserved attention to the work of Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova. They have extended reliability theory - developed for use with complex electronic machines in the 1950s - into the realm of the human body and life span: "We are like machines made up of redundant components, many of which are defective right from the start." Machine failure rates and human death rates are very similar in form - which should not be too surprising. Reliability theory predicts no fixed upper limit to life span: "Even small improvements to the processes of early human development - ones that increase the numbers of initially functional elements - could result in ... a significant extension of human life."

Link: http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2004-08-26-3