Cat Bohannon's book "Eve" - castrated men live longer

[DonCarlos (imported)]

I'm located in the UK and subscribe to the The Guardian newspaper online. It's a left of centre journal that uniquely is not owned by a big media company, and funded by its readers. An article yesterday caught my eye. The tag line was "Men and other mammals live longer if castrated". Cat is a PhD researcher who has written a book titled "Eve". She had given a talk recently at the Hay Literary Festival here in the UK. The core subject is how women's bodies have evolved and the differences between male and female physiology and anatomy. I haven't read the book yet (but it is ordered) but Cat has been doing the media rounds to publicise her book and one of the themes she repeats is that men live "smuggling these two death nuggets" and how that impacts our health especially in later life. It's interesting that this gets talked about so rarely and that she has brought it into mainstream media.

The interview she did on UK's Channel 4 News is here:

https://www.channel4.com/news/cat-bohan ... n-survival

Welcome support for those of us who have come to the conclusion that our lives would on balance be better without testes!

[wasala92 (imported)]

Cool. Let us know after you read the book whether you would recommend it

[Castor (imported)]

There are always reports claiming that life without testicles would be better and would prolong life. What do these reports actually mean? Without testicles, we men lack at least the testosterone they produce. If we take oestrogen after castration, we become hormonally similar to women. Many eunuchs don't want that. If we take testosterone instead, we can practically neutralise castration. Does the author answer the question of what she recommends for a life without testicles?

[WheelyFixed]

Interesting, nothing we haven't really heard previously, with the slight glossed over bit that the '14 years longer life' seems to only apply to those castrated pre-puberty, or close to it. Available data seems to say that by the time most of us get to the surgeon the life extension benefit is probably only a couple years at best... Also according to Jesus, most of the data for people is limited sample size. However there is comparable data for male pets and other domestic animals that have been fixed living longer than their intact counterparts....

Obviously I haven't read the book, but overall my impression of her from the interview was that she sounds pretty reasonable, most of what she mentioned I've heard about in other contexts. I also appreciate that they didn't try to sensationalize the bit on castration...

WheelyFixed

[The Maintaner (imported)]

:)QK I have to my grand farther and my farther out lived there wives Ernie of Maine

[WheelyFixed]

:)QK I have to my grand farther and my farther out lived there wives Ernie of Maine

Well my father and maternal grandfather outlived their wives, but my maternal grandmother FAR outlived her husband (she passed at 103)

I'm not sure just how longer her father lasted, but he definitely was NOT fixed - he outlasted THREE wives (sequentially), and had 7-8 surviving children each...

I attended ONE 'clan reunion' - held at the rented auditorium of the local town hall, with the family tree posted around 3 walls... I decided never again, after having a dozen or so elderly ladies greeting me with "So you are _____, the last time I saw you, you were this high (holding hand near knees) and then getting mad because I didn't remember them, and (worse) didn't understand exactly how they were related to me....

WheelyFixed

[WheelyFixed]

Thread on a relevant paper http://forums.eunuch.org/showthread.php ... etic-aging

Applies to sheep, but Jesus has said in other threads that there are similar results for many other domestic animals. There is a pretty conclusive study on the Korean Eunuchs that showed about a 12 year increase based on their family history record books. There is also the more recent US state of Indiana that castrated a large number of their mental institution patients (at different ages) and there are studies about their lifespans - do a search, I know it's on EA somewhere...

WheelyFixed

[Castor (imported)]

Even if Korean eunuchs are repeatedly cited to claim that castrated men generally live longer, this is no more convincing to me. Firstly, the number of men is far too small to make a generalisation for all men. Secondly, completely different reasons may be relevant for the longer lifespan, for example their privileged living conditions: they may not have had to do stressful work and were able to feed themselves better.

Nor do I find the constant references to domesticated animals any more convincing. Many castrated animals are known not to die a natural death. They are castrated because the meat yield is greater. In the case of cats, dogs and horses, where the situation is different, I have not read a single study that would suggest that castrating them leads to a significantly longer lifespan. However, castrating undoubtedly causes a change in behaviour. The animals become calmer.

The only thing that has emerged recently is an interesting study on sheep. This is about DNA ageing. But here, too, it is questionable whether the results from animals can be transferred 1:1 to humans, where the effect of testosterone deprivation already differs from man to man. The example always given of women unfortunately does not take into account that a castrated man cannot be compared with a woman. A woman normally has a naturally balanced hormone balance; a castrated man has to take care of it himself.

I skimmed Cat Bohannon's book. She may know a lot about female anatomy. She doesn't seem to know much about the male anatomy. In my opinion, her claims are just as scientifically based or unfounded as the examples mentioned above. There are other voices that claim that the older age of some women may well be related to their circumstances - which brings us back to the Korean eunuchs...

[WheelyFixed]

I won't argue hard about it, as I don't have anywhere near the ability to cite sources and exact numbers that Jesus does, most of what I've said is based on my understanding of the things he has said or pointed at...

That said, the Korean Eunuchs study at least claimed that lifestyle, diet and so forth were comparable to their intact contemporaries. Apparently the castrati studies are mixed results, with some showing longer life and others showing little or no difference (none were worse...) The Indiana study had lots of issues from a medical ethics standpoint, but is about the only human research in relatively recent times. It was also (far as i know) the only one that had some subjects castrated well past puberty.

I agree that most animals other than pets get done in early for various reasons, be it for food or other reasons - however what I've seen was referring to animals that lived out their 'natural lives' whether because they were being kept as pets, research or for other reasons.

In many ways it's rather a moot point since the limited available data seems to suggest that the increased lifespan advantage mostly only happens with castration pre-puberty, or at least in adolescence, and becomes much less with age, especially after 40 or so... Bottom line is that by the time most of us get done, the advantage is only going to be a few months to a year, which is pretty much 'noise' from a statistical standpoint...

WheelyFixed

[Castor (imported)]

I think there are really a lot of good reasons to get castrated, but I think a longer lifespan is far-fetched until someone comes up with more convincing arguments.