Alexander Fedintsev has published a mortality simulator that calculates the proportion of people who will survive to a selected age
Alexander Fedintsev has published a mortality simulator that calculates the proportion of people who will survive to a selected age
On August 8, Fedintsev published Lifespan Simulator, a scenario model of male mortality in Spain. Users specify when different causes of death will be prevented. The model calculates what proportion of a present-day cohort will survive to a selected age.
In a post published on August 8, Fedintsev examines a common way of calculating gains in longevity. In his example, separately estimated gains in life expectancy from eliminating cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and all other causes of death add up to 12,09 years. These gains apply to the same people. A person who survives cancer continues to age and may later die from vascular disease, pneumonia, or another cause.
Competing causes of death occur when one disease kills a person before another disease can do so. Eliminating one cause therefore changes the remaining risks faced by the people whose deaths it would have caused. In 1999, epidemiologists J. P. Mackenbach, Anton Kunst, and their colleagues analyzed data from 5 975 Dutch death certificates issued in 1990. They showed that eliminating one cause changes the relative gains produced by eliminating the others.
Lifespan Simulator follows a single present-day cohort from year to year. Users specify when cancer, dementia, and vascular disease will be prevented, as well as the age for which survival should be calculated. The result is the proportion of people in that same cohort who will survive to that age.
Fedintsev describes the simulator's purpose as follows:
what if we eliminated all or nearly all diseases and also simulated the process as realistically as possible, meaning that we eliminated them gradually rather than all at once
In the example, cancer and dementia are eliminated after 50 years, vascular disease after 40, while separate timelines are specified for sarcopenia, pneumonia, and osteoporosis. The simulator can then calculate what proportion of the author's peers will survive to 150 years of age.
The simulator can test a long-life scenario by specifying which causes of death can be prevented, when this will happen, and how many people will be affected. Together, these conditions determine what proportion of people will survive to the selected age.