
Scientists: 'Castration is the key to a longer life' - iProject
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/25/castration_long_life/
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reasonattlm
Over at the Gerontology Research Group list, epidemiologist S. Jay Olshansky
commented:

"It was quite a silly story. The authors misunderstood the evolutionary theory
of senescence. Furthermore, they failed to account for other behavioral
attributes of the folks being studied. I don't understand how that paper
passed through peer review."

There are a lot of theories floating around regarding gender differences in
longevity; that we cannot definitively say why the difference exists is a good
example of the tremendous complexity of the intersection of metabolism,
genetics, and aging:

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Afightaging.org+...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Afightaging.org+gender)

But read the paper - it's open access:

[http://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2812...](http://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2812%2900712-9)

For my money, I'd wager that their methodology for finding life spans in the
genealogy data for the 81 out of 385 mentioned eunuchs (and/or the intrinsic
structure of that data) is predisposed towards selecting longer-lived
individuals.

~~~
microtherion
I'm sure there needs to be considerable discussion of the methodology and
conclusions of this paper, but in the mean time, it's going to be an useful
paper to tweak people touting the health benefits of circumcision (based on
research that is not all that indisputable either).

"Why cut off the tip and gain a few months of life expectation, if you could
cut it ALL off and gain DECADES"

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gte910h
They don't seem to have controlled for daily activity, only socio-economic
status.

[http://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2812...](http://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2812%2900712-9)

I am guessing there are confounding co-factors that make this research
woefully inadequate and not useful.

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gadders
Bollocks to that.

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dan00
As someone who has suffered from the absence of testosterone: castration?
brilliant idea!

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bmcorser
"... when eunuchs were less unique"

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daviddi
Isn't that woman's fault?

