Word: calment
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...agreed to "purchase" the house of an elderly client with $500-a-month installments, then a steep price--on condition that he would inherit the property outright the moment she died. Last week, 30 years older and $180,000 poorer, Raffray, 77, expired on Christmas Day. His client, Jeanne Calment, celebrated the holiday with a sumptuous hotel banquet in her hometown of Arles. "We all make bad deals in life," she joked to Raffray when she turned 120 early last year. She is now officially the oldest person in the world...
...left her unable to walk, and cataracts have robbed her of vision. (She has refused surgery, says her physician, Victor Lebre, because "she thinks it's normal at 120 not to see.") But there is no question that her wit is intact. Asked what kind of future she expects, Calment didn't miss a beat: "A very short one." As for her Methuselan achievement, "It's not impressive at all," she insisted. "It's natural to grow...
True, of course, but 120 borders on the unnatural. It is at the uppermost limit of what biologists believe is the maximum human life-span. Calment, says Harvard geriatrician Dr. Thomas Perls, "is the Michael Jordan of aging," genetically blessed with extraordinary physical gifts that favor survival. "The chances of you or me getting to be her age are similar to our chances of playing basketball like Jordan." Only one other person is known to have lived as long: Shigechiyo Izumi of Japan, who died in 1986 at 120 years...
...there's a secret to long life, it is surely in the genes. Calment's mother lived to 86, her father to 93. Scientists speculate that long-lived people may carry genes that confer special resistance to the assault of free radicals, chemical residues of metabolism that do increasing damage to DNA as the years roll by. Researchers are also looking at apolipoprotein E, a substance that ferries cholesterol to and from cells. People vulnerable to Alzheimer's and heart disease tend to have a certain type of gene for this protein, while those who live longest tend to have...
...Jeanne Calment, she seems to embody the calm resilience associated with long life. "I took pleasure when I could," she said last week. "I acted clearly and morally and without regret. I'm very lucky...