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The hunt for CR mimetics grew out of a desire to better understand caloric restriction’s many effects on the body. Scientists first recognized the value of the practice more than 60 years ago, when they found that rats fed a low-calorie diet lived longer on average than free-feeding rats and also had a reduced incidence of conditions that become increasingly common in old age. What is more, some of the treated animals survived longer than the oldest-living animals in the control group, which means that the maximum lifespan (the oldest attainable age), not merely the normal lifespan, increased. Various interventions, such as infection-fighting drugs, can increase a population’s average survival time, but only approaches that slow the body’s rate of aging will increase the maximum lifespan.
Why is it "oldest-living"? Wouldn't "oldest" express the same meaning?
Ite, maledicti, in ignem aeternum!
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No, the 'oldest' organisms are the ones which are still alive.
The 'longest-living' are those which lived the longest, most of which will now be dead.
I disagree with the use of 'oldest-living' but agree with the attempt to use a compound adjective to express the idea that you include the ones that have died.
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Atatürk wrote:The hunt for CR mimetics grew out of a desire to better understand caloric restriction’s many effects on the body. Scientists first recognized the value of the practice more than 60 years ago, when they found that rats fed a low-calorie diet lived longer on average than free-feeding rats and also had a reduced incidence of conditions that become increasingly common in old age. What is more, some of the treated animals survived longer than the oldest-living animals in the control group, which means that the maximum lifespan (the oldest attainable age), not merely the normal lifespan, increased. Various interventions, such as infection-fighting drugs, can increase a population’s average survival time, but only approaches that slow the body’s rate of aging will increase the maximum lifespan.
Why is it "oldest-living"? Wouldn't "oldest" express the same meaning? They might have been better off using "longest-living". They mean the individuals that lived the longest in the treatment group lived longer (became older) than the longest-living animals in the control group. So, not only was average survival in the treatment group longer, but even among the outliers the treatment group lived longer than the control group.
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