PBS: Think Tank: Transcript for "Are older people getting younger?"

« Back to Are older people getting younger? main page

Transcript for:

Are older people getting younger?

Think Tank Transcripts:Are Older People Getting Younger?

ANNOUNCER: 'Think Tank' is made possible by Amgen, recipient ofthe Presidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen, helping cancerpatients through cellular and molecular biology, improving livestoday and bringing hope for tomorrow.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I'm Ben Wattenberg. We all age every minuteof every day. More and more of us live into old age. Is this thegolden age of aging, or is there a down side?

Joining us to discuss the matter are Betty Friedan, author of 'TheFeminine Mystique' and, more recently, 'The Fountain of Age'; Dr.Richard Sprott, director of the Biology of Aging, National Instituteon Aging; David Gutmann, professor of psychiatry and education atNorthwestern University and author of 'Reclaimed Powers: Men andWomen in Later Life'; and Dr. Elizabeth Cobbs, director, Division ofAging Studies and Services, George Washington University MedicalCenter.

The topic before this house: 'Are older people getting younger?This week on 'Think Tank.'

'Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.' So wrote RobertBrowning more than 100 years ago. Was he right? Well, to start, weall do age. How? Here are two important theories.

First, the Hayflick Limit. The body's cells replace themselvesonly 50 or so times before they stop and die, but why? Perhapsbecause of telemeres, tiny knots at the ends of our chromosomes whichshorten each time a cell divides. When telemeres are gone, cells die-- a process called cell senescence.

Second, free radicals. As our cells produce energy, the createhighly reactive by-products called free radicals which attack ourcells and destroy our DNA.

Whatever the cause of aging Americans are living longer than everbefore. In 1900, the average life expectancy for an adult at age 20was 63 years. By 1992, thanks to improved sanitation and bettermedical care, it was 77 years.

Americans are not just living longer. They are healthier --physically for sure and possibly psychologically as well.

Item: The percentage of older Americans with disabilities isdropping. Today only 23 percent of people over 65 suffer chronicdisability.

Item: Recent studies show that the mental abilities of people whoare not afflicted by diseases like Alzheimer's do not declinesignificantly as they age.

Still, despite the advances, growing old is often tough. It can betough on both the body and the soul.

Is this a good time to be old in America? Richard Sprott?

MR. SPROTT: Well, it certainly beats the alternative, which is tonot be here at all. Sure, this is a good time to be old in America,because I think modern biology and modern medicine are beginning tooffer real serious promise of dealing with the disabilities of thelast third of the lifespan and to promise us more independence andbetter functioning in the terminal third of our lifespan. That's verypromising.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay, Dr. Elizabeth Cobbs?

MS. COBBS: Absolutely. There's an explosion of information andknowledge about how to be well when you're old, and the technologiesand medicines that are available now have much less of a burdenassociated with them also and a high rate of effectiveness. So it'svery exciting from a medical standpoint.

MR. WATTENBERG: David Gutmann?

MR. GUTMANN: Well, it's certainly a better time on thepsychological front, so that aging is seen in its own terms as aperiod of life, rather than the antechambers of death.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Betty Friedan?

MR. FRIEDAN: It's a good time if they don't mess around withMedicare and Social Security the way they're threatening to do, thateverybody should throw their Social Security away on the stockmarket. If we can continue that and if we break through, as we'vebegun to do, to speak of age only as a program decline ordeterioration from youth -- that's the peak -- to terminal senility,we know that's not true, and we know that, for instance, only 5percent of Americans over 65 have any kind of senility, but thequestion is, are we going to be able to articulate not this obsessionwith youth, but what I call the fountain of age, a sense of newperiod of human life to be seen in its own terms, where we don't evenknow yet what the possibilities of growth and development are? It'snot just decline.

MR. WATTENBERG: It was not long ago that a person aged 70 wasconsidered old. We now have a young man with no gray hair whatsoeveron his head, Robert Dole, at age 73, who is clearly going to be theRepublican nominee for president, doesn't stop going. You have AlanGreenspan, who must be about 70, chairman of the Federal ReserveBoard. And lots of other examples. Is something -- as David Gutmannsaid, is something changing in our society, or is the physiologychanging? What's going on?

MR. SPROTT: Well, for starters, I think we've got -- our medicalapproaches allow people to function much better. Part of that is thefact that they had better nutrition and better health care throughouttheir life, so they last toward that portion of the lifespan inbetter shape than they used to. And that's had a dramatic effect onour cultural expectations as well. We have more older people aroundas role models. We see more highly successful older people. So weexpect better functioning of older people.

MR. WATTENBERG: Would a Dole presidency give people who were onceconsidered elderly sort of a boost.

MS. COBBS: We're getting a perspective. I mean, Dole isn't reallythat old. When we're looking at the growth in the segment of old, oldpeople over the age of 85, he starts to look like a youngster.

MR. WATTENBERG: Dr. Cobbs, you deal with elderly patients as agerontologist, hands on. What are some of the recent medical advancesthat have been specific to old people that have changed the rate ofdisability and the intensity of disability. What would be the topfive things or --

MS. COBBS: Well, I think it's more health practices over alifespan that have made the biggest impact. We have the ability tocure many acute illnesses.

MR. WATTENBERG: For example?

MS. COBBS: Blood pressure control -- exercise, diet -- preventingheart disease and stroke. That's a huge area causing disability rightthere. So it's not just the medical interventions as much as it's thehealth practices that people are following in their expectations.

MR. WATTENBERG: Well, you have things like the new forms of lasercataract surgery> I mean, that's something that has madeeverything a lot easier for people who are aging.

MS. COBBS: Absolutely. And hearing and visual impairments withthose kinds of technologies. Also surgery. We've gone to much lessinvasive techniques of surgery and anesthesia and --

MR. WATTENBERG: For example, what would be some of the proceduresthat would be less invasive for elderly people?

MS. COBBS: Right. Well, surgery that's done by a laproscope, forexample, when it's safe to do it that way, can spare a prolongedhospital stay.

MR. WATTENBERG: On what sort of a condition, for example?

MS. COBBS: A gallbladder operation, for example. Instead of havinga long incision and a week or 10 days in the hospital, people areleaving the next day and going back to work.

MR. WATTENBERG: Dick Sprott, there was a study out recently, wesaw in the paper, that among elderly people who do not haveAlzheimer's, their rate of comprehension does not diminish.

MR. SPROTT: I think that there are large number of older peoplewho don't show signs of Alzheimer's or other senile dementias, whomaintain very good function throughout their lifespan. I thinkthere's also some interesting data to suggest what you do as you age.People who stay in professions that keep them mentally active staymentally agile far longer. Staying active and intricate andcognitively involved has a positive effect.

MR. GUTMANN: Well, there seems to be a shift actually away fromthe priorities of youth, which are quick processing of a lot ofincoming information, dealing with trees, towards a capacity in laterlife, albeit that the brain works slower, to see forests, constructforests out of a clumping of trees and to see larger patterns.

MR. WATTENBERG: The difference between knowledge and wisdom.

MR. FRIEDAN: Exactly. Wisdom -- there are qualities that emergebeyond youth, that if you just look at the yardstick of youth, youwon't get. But if you give a 17-year-old and a 7-year-old the sametest --

MR. WATTENBERG: Seventeen and 70.

MR. FRIEDAN: Seventeen and 70.

MR. WATTENBERG: Right.

MR. FRIEDAN: Okay. It might be the simplest test, like you use tosay whether they're senile or not -- you know, unrelated words ornumbers. The 70-year-old does better. You give a test that hasanything to do with meaning, and the 70-year-old does better. The70-year-old sees it whole, sees it in the context of a lifetime ofexperience, gets the essential meaning, and sloughs off theirrelevant details. And there is such a thing as wisdom, but we aresuch a youth-obsessed society that we only use that yardstick ofyouth, and it is interesting, we may begin to see that -- I mean,look how badly the freshmen in Congress did in a certain kind of --well, we won't get into politics, but --

MR. WATTENBERG: We might. (Laughter.) Not right now.

MR. SPROTT: To follow up on one example of what Betty just said,if we look at every time there's a spectacular automobile accidentthat involves somebody who has a recent Alzheimer's diagnosis,there's a great cry to get older drivers off the road. Those roadsare built by 25-year-old -- designed by 25-year-old highway engineersto be driven in cars that were also designed by 25-year-oldautomobile engineers to be driven by 65-year-old people who can't seeover the dashboard, don't process information in the same way, don'tget information far enough ahead of the intersection. What we reallyshould be doing is looking at the context in which people live outtheir lives and making it fit the people who are there, not blamingthe problem on getting old. The problem here is not getting old; it'sthe environment in which we're asking people to function.

MR. WATTENBERG: You were talking a moment ago about how importantit is to stay alert and stay interested. You wrote, or said somethingin an interview that I read, I think dealing with both the mind andthe genitals, which was, as people age, 'use it or lose it.' Is thatabout --

MR. SPROTT: Right. Yeah, I think that most of our functions arethings that we keep using. We just talked a moment ago aboutcognition. The same thing is probably true of reproductive behavior.If you keep on using it, you maintain a higher level of function thanif you let it wither away.

MR. WATTENBERG: People have sex into the nineties? Is that whatI've been reading? Some people?

MR. SPROTT: Some people.

MR. FRIEDAN: Sure.

MR. GUTMANN: They at least boast about it.

MR. FRIEDAN: Ben, your discussion looks at age, primarily theproblem of sickness, of medicines, of cures, of operations, or Godknows what, whereas, in fact, the reality is that the fastest-growinggroup of our whole population are people that are not dying after 50or 60 or 70, that are continuing -- the great majority of them -- tobe a part of life. And that -- to see them as a part of life, so thatwhat I think is going to come ahead in the next 10, 15 years, we getrid of this concept of retirement. Even now I hear people say, 'Well,that'll be my retirement job.' I mean, people are not going to stopfunctioning in society. I told the American Association of RetiredPersons they should change their name to the American Association ofResurgent Persons.

The thing that people need more than any medicine, and this comesfrom the research on the National Institute on Aged -- big, giganticresearch, human aging one and two -- two important things: purposesand projects that gives complex structures so that they use theirability, keeps them a part of society, and bonds of intimacy, love.It doesn't have to be sex love. Bonds of intimacy. So they're people,and the important thing is that we break through this mystique ofage, just a sickness, just a decline, and look at this as a newperiod of human life and then use these abilities in society, usethis wisdom. And people will not need so much of the medicines.

MR. WATTENBERG: David, your book was called 'Reclaimed Powers.'What did you mean by that?

MR. GUTMANN: Well, the point being that in later life or in what Icall the post-parental period of life, what the French like to callthe Third Age, there is a tendency for both sexes to reclaim, if youwill, aspects of themselves, potentials, that were hitherto unused,hitherto on hold -- subordinated, if you will, to the tests of careeradvancement, survival, child rearing, that kind of thing.

MR. WATTENBERG: What would be an example of that?

MR. GUTMANN: You see it quite dramatically, I think, in women, asthey sort of emerge, as they come out of the closest if you will ofthe domestic role. They exit from the parental emergency, from thatsense that somehow they have to live in and through their childrenand the kids can make it on their own now. You see a great sort of --kind of a sense, very often a sense of liberation, a sense of 'now Idon't have to be developing them; I can develop myself.'

MR. WATTENBERG: Is this why women live longer, because they're --

MR. GUTMANN: I think it has a lot to do with it, yeah. Becausethey -- what women come in touch with is the kind of aggressivitythat they previously sort of throttled back on for the sake ofchildren. When that passes, women, as it were, reemerge. They reclaimthe aggression that they used to send out of the house with theirhusband.

MR. WATTENBERG: And what happens to the husband?

MR. GUTMANN: The husband's also --

MR. WATTENBERG: He's retired from his macho wars and being aprovider and --

MR. GUTMANN: Right. And he begins to reclaim that he used toconcede to his wife, a gentleness, a tenderness, a sensuousness, andeven a maternal quality. We all know about sort of the maternalgrandpa and the tough grandma. Well, that in a sense -- thatstereotype has truth in it.

MR. SPROTT: And it's probably a good thing it does, becausebiologically that's what's going on at the same time.

MR. GUTMANN: Right, hormonal --

MR. SPROTT: This older woman's estrogen levels are dropping, soher androgen levels make up a greater part of her hormone balance andshe becomes biologically more aggressive, while her husband'stestosterone levels fall and he becomes less aggressive. See, biologysort of reinforces that shift.

MR. WATTENBERG: Elizabeth Cobbs, do you see these sorts ofpatterns emerging with specific patients that you deal with?

MS. COBBS: Well, I did want to ask what happens to the woman whodoesn't submerge, but maybe that's another discussion.

MR. GUTMANN: Who doesn't submerge what? In the earlier years? Wedon't really know enough about that yet.

MR. FRIEDAN: Well, that's becoming the case, though. They don'thave to wait to have crossover.

MR. SPROTT: We have a whole generation --

MR. WATTENBERG: Let's just look at the darker side of this. Imean, we all know a lot of elderly people who are despondent anddespairing and devastated and are saying, 'What use am I now?' and'I'm sick.' What --

MR. FRIEDAN: No, I don't know a lot of people like that.

MR. WATTENBERG: You do not?

MR. FRIEDAN: I know a lot of older people that are doing the mostamazing -- not, you know, lifting weights or anything like that.

MR. WATTENBERG: Although people are lifting -- I was readingpeople are lifting weights at age 90 now to stay in shape.

MR. FRIEDAN: But they are moving very vitally in society.

MR. WATTENBERG: Let us stipulate that many aged are doing that,but I mean, there are also many aged who are not who -- who really do-- you must treat patients who are deeply despondent as they age.

MR. GUTMANN: Yeah. What often they are responding, though it'smasked as a depression, is really their own developmental potentials.There are a lot of women -- and hopefully because of the work ofpeople like Betty and others this will pass -- there are a lot ofwomen who are still very frightened, if you will, of their ownreclaimed powers. And, you know, rather than live them out, ratherthan show them in the world, rather than show them to their husbands,they will take on, in effect, what they presumed would be hisdepression if they showed them to him.

MR. FRIEDAN: We're going to have to have new images of romance, oflove, of new kinds of friendships. We're going to have to have newimages of what accomplishment and contribution really looks likes forolder people. You know, I did a study for 'The Fountain of Age' ofwhat the image of aged America was.

MR. WATTENBERG: I read that about the magazine pictures.

MR. FRIEDAN: Couldn't find anything. Couldn't find any image ofwomen or men that weren't young doing anything. MR. WATTENBERG: Thesewere in magazines like what? News magazines and --

MR. FRIEDAN: All kinds. Women's, men's, news magazines. No imageof women -- of anyone that wasn't young doing anything that anyAmerican would like to do.

MR. SPROTT: I don't really want to disagree with what Betty's hadto say, because that's quite -- everything she's said is quite trueof people who are cognitively intact, but I think we do a disserviceif we ignore the fact that there are people, lots of older people,who aren't cognitively intact. And a good deal of our concern needsto be directed to those people. I spent -- last year I spent a half aday every week in a nursing home to try to put my biologicalexpectations up against reality.

MR. FRIEDAN: But that's not the only reality.

MR. WATTENBERG: Let's just talk about --

MR. SPROTT: It isn't the only reality, but it is a reality.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay, but let's talk about that reality. I mean --

MR. FRIEDAN: You want to talk about that reality and not thereality of the unknown frontier.

MR. SPROTT: I think you have to do both. I think you ignore that--

MR. WATTENBERG: I want to talk about both. We're very eclectichere.

MR. SPROTT: -- and that is a mistake.

MR. FRIEDAN: But they're not equal. The reality he's talking aboutis 5 percent. It is the most afflicted, most psychological 5 percent.There is an insistence --

MR. SPROTT: Five percent at any one time.

MR. FRIEDAN: -- of seeing older people in those terms.

MR. WATTENBERG: Dick Sprott says an interesting thing. He says 5percent at any one time.

MR. SPROTT: Your chances if you live to be 80 or older of being ina long-term care institution are considerably higher than 5 percent.Five percent of the people in that portion of the population arethere at any one time, but your risk of winding up in that situation,if you live into your nineties, is more like 25 to 30 percent.

MR. FRIEDAN: Oh, if you live into your nineties, you should be solucky.

MR. SPROTT: You should be so lucky. That's right.

MR. WATTENBERG: If we eliminate diseases one by one, in theory, dowe live longer and longer and longer, not to 90, but to 100, 120,150? Or is there --

MR. SPROTT: There's argument about that.

MR. WATTENBERG: There is an argument. I mean --

MR. SPROTT: There are some people who believe that we couldproduce routinely 150- to 180-year-old human beings.

MR. WATTENBERG: Healthy people.

MR. SPROTT: Healthy people. There are lots of others who don'tthink that's what's going to happen, what'll happen is that more andmore of us will get out to that four score and 10 years in goodhealth and then drop off at the end with some catastrophic organfailure, that basically we're biologically programmed in that way.The longest living human being we curently know is something around121 years of age, and she just died this spring. I think she died.You know, out of billions of people for whom we have some kind ofrecord, there are two or three survivals past 115. So there's abiological limit there that we approach.

MR. GUTMANN: To get back to something you asked earlier, though,Ben, you know, again, the preoccupation with death is a youngperson's schtick, it turns out. But, as you remarked, the olderperson does not so much fear death. They fear social death. They feardying to others. They fear dying in their humanity. Physical deathbecomes far less of an issue. I've rarely seen anybody driven to adepression by the prospect of oncoming death. The prospect ofimmobilization, yes. The prospect of losing your marbles, yes. Butnot by the prospect of physical death per se.

MR. SPROTT: Loss of independence of function we fear.

MR. FRIEDAN: What we have to do is give you a new sense that, withdignity, you can choose to die, not having all these invasive thingsthat are not going to really cure you and can be terribly painful, bein a hospital hooked up to a machine, but at home surrounded byfamily and friends; in a sense that you live your death, it's a partof life --

MR. WATTENBERG: This is part of --

MR. FRIEDAN: -- that you have real choices.

MR. WATTENBERG: -- the hospice movement?

MR. FRIEDAN: Yes. It's very important, very important newdevelopment. I think it's much more important than nursing homes.

MR. WATTENBERG: If a person in his fifties, sixties, seventies,whatever wants to live longer and healthier, what should he or shedo?

MR. SPROTT: I think it's easy, but it's not what people reallywant to hear.

MR. WATTENBERG: Well --

MR. SPROTT: One, you give up smoking. You engage in regular dailyload-bearing exercise. You eat foods in moderation. That's about it.Fasten your seatbelt. Those are the things that make you live a longtime. There's no magic bullet. There's no pill that's going to do it.

MS. COBBS: And keep working in a job you enjoy.

MR. SPROTT: Keep working in a job you enjoy. You're right.

MR. GUTMANN: Avoid depression.

MR. WATTENBERG: Yeah, right, but how do you --

MR. GUTMANN: No, one of the things we find is that -- there's someinteresting data on this from your side of the fence, but depressionin later life, much as in infancy, degrades the immune system.

MR. WATTENBERG: But how do you avoid depression?

MR. GUTMANN: Well, by a more feisty, assertive, combative stance,which again is why women, I think, live longer than men.

MR. FRIEDAN: You take new risks. You try something new if you burnout on your old stuff.

MR. GUTMANN: Yeah,.

MR. FRIEDAN: You find some way to use whatever you've got or toeven find out some new stuff you're capable of. And you risk fallingin love again. No matter what you're going to do with it, you justrisk.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right. Let's just -- last question. Issociety, as we know it now, doing better at making things better forthe elderly?

MR. SPROTT: I think we are getting better as there are more olderrole models around, and I think we've got a ways to go. And I think,if you go to Hawaii, for example, where the silver-haired people arevenerated in a way they aren't here, you'll see what we could do on aregular basis. People step out of the way of people with gray hair tolet them get on the bus first. That doesn't happen in our cities, butit could.

MR. WATTENBERG: Here you knock them aside because they may be alittle weaker.

MR. SPROTT: But we could do it differently.

MR. GUTMANN: They don't have the upper body strength. (Laughter.)

MR. WATTENBERG: Dr. Cobbs?

MS. COBBS: I think we're doing a much better job, and I agree withBetty's point about that this is an intergenerational, intergenderkind of activity and that these different groups have so much to giveeach other, and so the challenge of solving the problems of aging orwhatever problems people are facing come often from other groups andhow people can give to each other. That's what we're really learningabout.

MR. GUTMANN: One of the things that's happening in the society isthat there is generally now a greater acceptance of, you know, thequalities of softness and tenderness in men and the qualities ofassertiveness, aggression, competitiveness in women. And I think thathas particular benefits. I never thought it was a very good agendafor the young, but it has particular benefits, I think, for theelders. And I'd rather -- by the way, I'd like to see us use the wordelders rather than aged. It has -- that is, it kind of accredits thedevelopmental changes that normally take place in them.

MR. WATTENBERG: The whole New Age syndrome is not necessarily sogreat for young people, but it makes a lot of sense for elderlypeople.

MR. GUTMANN: It makes a lot of sense for the elderly.

MR. WATTENBERG: Interesting.

MR. FRIEDAN: So what about a shorter work week for everybody? Itwould enable -- it would be very good for women and men in theparenting years. It would be very good for youth and beyond youththat have to combine education and work. It would leave older peoplenot to be pushed out as they are now in their sixties, their fifties,even in their forties, but continue to contribute to society. Theydon't want to do it, and none of us should want to do it, in the kindof 60-hour week practically that people are working now.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right. Thank you, Richard Sprott, BettyFriedan, Elizabeth Cobbs, and David Gutmann.

And thank you. Please send your questions and comments to NewRiver Media, 1150 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20036. Or we canbe reached via e-mail at thinktv@aol.com and on the World Wide Web atwww.thinktank.com.

For 'Think Thank,' I'm Ben Wattenberg.

ANNOUNCER: This has been a production of BJW, Incorpated, inassociation with New River Media, which are solely responsible forits content.

'Think Tank' is made possible by Amgen, a recipient of thePresidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen, helping cancerpatients through cellular and molecular biology, improving livestoday and bringing hope for tomorrow.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. END

Back to top

Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc.

©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved.

Web development by Bean Creative.