“I wanna be forever young!”  You can certainly influence your own health, quality of life, and longevity, as this course will examine.

Global life expectancy has doubled over the last century and is steadily increasing in many countries. We will look at factors limiting lifespan and their dramatic mitigation, focusing on the USA but also glancing at similar and lower-income countries. We will not go into two potential major causes of death: wars—high-lighted by the distressing war in Ukraine—and climate change, both amply covered elsewhere.

Over time, famines have decreased. Better agriculture, hygiene, immunizations, antibiotics, cancer treatments, preventative medicines and treatments, and public health have improved lifespan, as can good governance. We will examine these influences and the underlying science, also COVID-19, motor accidents, suicides, guns, opioids, and health delivery, its inequality, cost, and access. What are the tradeoffs between extremely high-priced treatments for a few individuals versus low-cost preventative measures such as immunizations for many?

Heredity, the genes received from our parents, plays an important role in longevity; long-lived parents tend to have long-lived children. The course will look at genetics and its recent advances in prevention and treatment of genetic diseases, such sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, and BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and their associated cancers. Gene activity can be modified by environment, including the lifestyle choices each one of us makes.

We will look at what can you do for your own health. You have considerable control over your lifestyle and over medical approaches to your health. How long would you like to live? 100 years or less, 120 years or more, or indefinitely? What would alter your perspective? Your health, your family and friends, the effects on society?

The class will consist of lectures with slides and some videos, also breaks for class discussions.