Living too long: the current focus of medical research on increasing the quantity, rather than the quality, of life is damaging our health and harming the economy.

Abstract

Should medical research be focused on increasing the quantity or quality of life? For a variety of reasons, past research has focused more on quantity of life, but the resultant life extension, without reducing ageing, has increased the extent of ageing and age‐related disease, plus pension, and social and medical costs, in an unsustainable way. I argue here that medical research urgently needs to be refocused away from cancer and cardiovascular research, and onto reducing ageing and age‐related morbidity, thereby increasing both our health and our wealth. > …years are being added to our lives, life is not being added to our years: the extra years are being added at the very end of our lives and are of poor quality Human life expectancy has been increasing at a rapid rate [1]. Better health care and hygiene, healthier life styles, sufficient food and improved medical care and reduced child mortality mean that we can now expect to live much longer than our ancestors just a few generations ago. Life expectancy at birth in the EU was about 69 years in 1960 and about 80 years in 2010, which corresponds to a rate of increase in life expectancy of 2.2 years per decade [1], [2]. If this rate of increase remains unchanged, as it has for the last century, then someone born in the EU today would be expected to live about 100 years. However, this dramatic increase in life expectancy did not come with a proportionate increase in quality of life for the elderly. Generally, increased life expectancy has increased the risk of disease, disability, dementia and advanced ageing prior to death [3], [4]. For example, 30% of the population over 60 in the UK become demented before they die, and this proportion is likely …