Human mortality improvement in evolutionary context
Human mortality improvement in evolutionary context
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1215627109
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发表时间：
2012-10-30
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Vaupel, James W.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Burger, Oskar;Baudisch, Annette;Vaupel, James W.
随着低死亡率国家在避免死亡方面继续取得进展，大多数国家的预期寿命都在增加，有几个国家的预期寿命已超过80岁。降低死亡率对健康和经济的影响已经引起了极大的关注，但所观察到的人类死亡率的可塑性还没有放在一个广泛的进化背景下。我们通过比较各种人群与进化的人类死亡率概况来量化死亡率降低的速度和数量，这里估计为民族志观察到的狩猎采集者的平均死亡率模式。我们发现，人类死亡率大幅下降，狩猎采集者和今天死亡率最低的人群之间的差异大于狩猎采集者和野生黑猩猩之间的差异。这种死亡率下降的大部分发生在1900年以后，在大约8,000代人类中，只有大约4代人经历过这种情况。此外，人类死亡率的改善与通过实验室选择实验和内分泌途径突变实现的其他物种死亡率的降低相当或更高。这种观察到的特定年龄死亡风险的可塑性与传统的衰老理论不一致。
Life expectancy is increasing in most countries and has exceeded 80 in several, as low-mortality nations continue to make progress in averting deaths. The health and economic implications of mortality reduction have been given substantial attention, but the observed malleability of human mortality has not been placed in a broad evolutionary context. We quantify the rate and amount of mortality reduction by comparing a variety of human populations to the evolved human mortality profile, here estimated as the average mortality pattern for ethnographically observed hunter-gatherers. We show that human mortality has decreased so substantially that the difference between hunter-gatherers and today's lowest mortality populations is greater than the difference between hunter-gatherers and wild chimpanzees. The bulk of this mortality reduction has occurred since 1900 and has been experienced by only about 4 of the roughly 8,000 human generations that have ever lived. Moreover, mortality improvement in humans is on par with or greater than the reductions in mortality in other species achieved by laboratory selection experiments and endocrine pathway mutations. This observed plasticity in age-specific risk of death is at odds with conventional theories of aging.