The world’s oldest woman died:
According to that same AFP article, “She has credited her longevity to minding her own business and not eating junk food.” Amen to minding one’s own business as a contributing factor to a long life.
The world changed a great deal during Sanborn’s lifetime, and there’s your understatement of the day. Through it all, though, she gave credit for her good health and longevity to her belief in Jesus and her salvation, and amen to that, too.
I don’t know why, but it seemed odd to me that the oldest woman would be in the United States. Seems like they’re always from Asia somewhere. But her predecessor was from France and the new oldest woman is also from the US. The west, it would seem, is on a roll.
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6 Responses to Formerly The Oldest Woman
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Oddly enough, her death – despite advanced age – will have to have a “cause” and not simply be listed as “old age” or “senescence.”
Health policy really runs into a barrier here. In certain countries, “heart failure” (congestive or otherwise) is the “go-to” listing cause for elderly deaths. That screws with the statistics for any number of things.
It’s been rather discussed in recent years, too. Then again, the argument’s much older; the Zucker brothers parodied it decades ago quite aptly.
It seems to me that, by and large, cause-of-death statistics really ought to only be looking at those within some degree of the societal mean. Once someone lives beyond a certain number of years (or percentage), the cause of death is less useful because even if they genuinely did die of heart failure, liver failure or something else was likely right down the corner. There comes a point where I think you need to say “that’s a life well lived” and focus on those that are dying younger than they should.
The numbers of people living to such an age are few enough that it’s unlikely to skew statistics in any meaningful way.
“…focus on those that are dying younger than they should.”
Which is, arguably, all of them.
I am under the impression that Web is talking about more than just people that die at 114. More like those that die at 90 with multiple failures at once.
Which is, arguably, all of them.
Well yeah, but at this point I say if you live to 90, you’ve done pretty well. It’s people that die at 70 or 60 that we need to really be asking questions about.
The highest life expectancy in American is of Asian-American women in Bergen County, NJ. If memory serves, their average life expectancy is 91.
I seem to come across frequent articles about some ancient black woman in the South, who’s so old her dad was a slave. Then there’s the cliche of the 110-year-old peasant from one of the old Soviet “stans” who drinks vodka and keffir daily.