Abstract
THE man or woman who lives to be eighty years old started as an “extraordinarily good egg” is a conclusion stated by Dr. George L. Streeter, director of the Department of Embryology of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, according to Science Service, Washington. Human eggs, like hen's eggs, vary greatly in nature and quality. It is estimated that one fourth of the fertilised human ova are not good enough eggs to be born as living individuals. Whether the infant survives its first year—and, in fact, a large number of them fail to do this depends in considerable part on the original quality of the egg. The individual who withstands the usual experiences of life until between fifty and sixty years old and then succumbs to its aggregate wear and tear, conforms to the actuary's ‘expectation of life at birth’ and to the embryo-legist's expectation of the performance of an egg of average quality. It is only the extraordinarily good egg that is still going strong at eighty years, and we see him or her doing this in the absence of any exquisite hygienic regime or environmental favour.
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Good Eggs and Old Age. Nature 133, 324 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133324a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133324a0