Word: spans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...What these children suffer from has no generally accepted understandable name. It is best illustrated by a case like Jeremy's. His mother found him "hard to handle" even as a baby. Later, his teacher complained that the child was hyperkinetic (overactive) and had an extremely short attention span. He was held back in second grade for failure in reading and spelling. Pressure for him to fulfill his supposed potential set up a vicious cycle in Jeremy, generating such hostility and anger that he performed more poorly than ever. He was still getting...
...life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life, for in the secret hour of life's midday the parabola is reversed, death is born. We grant goal and purpose to the ascent of life, why not to the descent?" Erik Erikson agrees: "Any span of the cycle lived without vigorous meaning, at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end, endangers the sense of life and the meaning of death in all whose life stages are intertwined...
More than 20 different highly speculative theories of aging are now being tested in scientific laboratories round the world. The method or methods by which the human life-span will be extended depend on which of these theories turns out to be correct. Some of them have to do with genetic engineering-attempts to alter the program of the cell by changing the coding on the DNA molecule. But nongenetic theories will probably pay off sooner. One current favorite holds that aging occurs because certain giant molecules in human cells eventually get bound together. These immobile aggregations clog the cells...
...their oxidizing properties can cause changes in the body such as hardening of the arteries. An antioxidant, which can be produced cheaply and taken in pills, is supposed to deactivate the free radicals, thereby retarding the aging process. One such antioxidant, BHT, has already dramatically increased the life-span of mice...
Even today the population over 75 in the U.S. is increasing at two and a half times the rate of the general population. If the average life-span is significantly further increased, the population would indeed become aged, a trend which would be accelerated by a drop in the birth rate. As to vigor, when the breakthrough comes in aging research, people in their 70s and 80s should have the energy of those in their 50s and 60s today. Ideally this would produce a greater number of selfless, highly educated wisemen who could undertake complex new projects for the benefit...