Live Long? Die Young? Answer Isn’t Just in Genes

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NYTimes

August 31, 2006

Live Long? Die Young? Answer Isn’t Just in Genes

By GINA KOLATA

phine Tesauro never thought she would live so

long. At 92, she is straight backed, firm jawed and

vibrantly healthy, living alone in an immaculate brick

ranch house high on a hill near McKeesport, a

Pittsburgh suburb. She works part time in a hospital

gift shop and drives her 1995 white Oldsmobile Cutlass

Ciera to meetings of her four bridge groups, to church

and to the grocery store. She has outlived her

husband, who died nine years ago, when he was 84. She

has outlived her friends, and she has outlived three

of her six brothers.

Mrs. Tesauro does, however, have a living sister, an

identical twin. But she and her twin are not so

identical anymore. Her sister is incontinent, she has

had a hip replacement, and she has a degenerative

disorder that destroyed most of her vision. She also

has dementia. “She just does not comprehend,” Mrs.

Tesauro says.

Even researchers who study aging are fascinated by

such stories. How could it be that two people with the

same genes, growing up in the same family, living all

their lives in the same place, could age so

differently?