Economos A C
Arch Gerontol Geriatr. 1982 May;1(1):3-27. doi: 10.1016/0167-4943(82)90003-6.
The history of the search for the law and the mechanism of mortality is reviewed. Recent evidence is summarized showing that the Gompertz law of exponentially increasing force of mortality is only an approximate model of mortality kinetics; various other models also provide a more or less satisfactory fit of mortality kinetics data. In particular, a simple model proposed by the author contains the Gompertz model as a special case and is of general validity: it consists of exponentially increasing cumulative mortality in an initial age range followed by exponentially decreasing survivorship. The various proposed mechanisms underlying mortality kinetics are reviewed, with emphasis on their origin and similarities, and a mechanism is proposed mending two basic classical ideas which are only partially valid: (1) Gompertz's accelerated decline of vitality coupled with identical aging rates of the individuals of a population; and (2) Simms' idea of statistically distributed individual aging rates with a uniform average aging rate (linear decline of physiological vitality). This theory provides a basis for analyzing the relationship between rates of aging and rates of dying.
回顾了探索死亡率规律和机制的历史。总结了近期证据，表明死亡率呈指数增长的冈珀茨定律只是死亡率动力学的一个近似模型；其他各种模型也或多或少能令人满意地拟合死亡率动力学数据。特别是，作者提出的一个简单模型包含冈珀茨模型作为特殊情况且具有普遍有效性：它包括在初始年龄范围内累积死亡率呈指数增长，随后存活率呈指数下降。回顾了各种提出的死亡率动力学潜在机制，重点关注其起源和相似性，并提出了一种机制，修正了两个仅部分有效的基本经典观点：（1）冈珀茨的活力加速下降以及种群中个体具有相同衰老率；（2）西姆斯关于个体衰老率呈统计分布且平均衰老率均匀（生理活力线性下降）的观点。该理论为分析衰老率和死亡率之间的关系提供了基础。
