You Can Live to 100. There's Just One Catch...

Thomas Kirkwood writes in Scientific American about why women live longer than men. Fellas, the good news is that you might be able to increase your lifespan by fourteen years. The, uh, bad news:

As many dog and cat owners can attest, neutered male animals often live longer than their intact counterparts. Indeed, the evidence supports the notion that male castration might be the ticket to a longer life.

Might the same be true of humans?[...]

The historical record is not good enough to determine if eunuchs tend to outlive normal healthy men, but some sad records suggest that they do. A number of years ago castration of men in institutions for the mentally disturbed was surprisingly commonplace. In one study of several hundred men at an unnamed institution in Kansas, the castrated men were found to live on average 14 years longer than their uncastrated fellows.


Link via Glenn Reynolds | Photo: NIH

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@AVarana

In addition, the bacteria on the teeth can cause heart disease, best to remove the teeth as well. I can't wait to be a 100 year old man with no tongue, teeth or balls. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
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Miss Cellania, if you allow a female cat to sexually mature before you sterilize her, then she is subject to the same hormonal type ailments humans do - menopause, uterine and breast cancer.
That's why you need to sterilize the cats BEFORE they reach their sexual maturity.

I'd be curious how would the early sterilization affect the human females.
I would have been more than glad to donate my parts even before puberty.
My wild guess is that the female hormones DON'T protect against e.g. osteoporosis - no children and very few men ever get that disease. And not to talk about any cancers where the hormones play a role.
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If there were hard evidence to support this, it sounds like a great deal; but I'd need a lot of convincing (and to have had all the kids I was planning on) before I put my jewels on the chopping block.
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