OMG! Rich People Don't Want to Die! My Take on Google Calico

Time Magazine should die -- it's too old and stodgy, plus it sensationalizes news with cover stories titled "Can Google Solve Death?"Of course, that story is about Calico, Google's latest foray into health after it unceremoniously shut down Google Health, perhaps because of oldsters as advisors (see "Google's 'Old School' Health Advisory Council").Calico also has an "oldster' in charge -- Arthur Levinson, the former chief of Genentech. Levinson was born in 1950, which makes him 63 years old or about 15 years away from a statistical death. By which I mean, in 15 years Levinson will reach the AVERAGE U.S. life expectancy of 78 years. This timeframe fits with Larry Page's Calico deadline for "solving" death: "In some industries, it takes ten or 20 years to go from an idea to something being real. Healthcare is certainly one of those ares," said Page. "Maybe we should shoot for the things that are really, really important so ten or 20 years from now we have those things done." Obviously, one of those things is to help rich people like Page and Levinson to live well beyond the 78 years allotted to the AVERAGE American.But wait! Rich people like Page and Levinson actually have life expectancies GREATER than 78 years! “Life expectancy has increased mainly among the privileged class,” says economist Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute. According to the Brookings Institute (see here), "Analysts have long recognized the powerful association between personal income an...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Google Life Expectancy Source Type: blogs