Leonid Gavrilov  wrote or quoted:

> A new publication just came out, which shows that exceptional human
> longevity is  *NOT* associated with infertility (contrary to the
> earlier widely publicized article published in "Nature"):
> 
> Does Exceptional Human Longevity Come With High Cost of Infertility?
> Testing the Evolutionary Theories of Aging.
> Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1019: 513-517, 2004
> 
> Full text is available online at:
> http://www.annalsnyas.org/cgi/content/full/1019/1/513
> and
> http://longevity-science.org/Evolution-ANYAS-2004.pdf [...]
>
> Does Exceptional Human Longevity Come with a High Cost of
> Infertility?: Testing the Evolutionary Theories of Aging.

http://calorierestriction.org/pmid/?n=15247077

The existence of a correlation might indicate that simply owning
good genes explains both great longevity and high fertility -
without providing any information about the costs of
pursuing longevity in terms of fertility.

Another hypothesis which may help explain the results:

Longevity and reproduction are often conflicting goals -
and they compete with one another for resources.

Where resource competition is involved it makes sense for
reproductive success and longevity to be conflicting goals.

However in this study, the subjects were members of European
aristocratic families.  These folk were likely to be rich.

In other words they were less likely to have to make resource allocation
decisions favouring longevity over reproduction - since they had
resources in abundance.

To give a concrete example:

A poor woman might have to decide whether to pay her child's medical
bill - or her own.  A rich woman never has to face that decision.

It seems reasonable to expect that the tradeoffs made between reproduction
and longevity are blunted in affluent populations - and so the results
found there may not apply to ordinary people.
-- 
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