Castration and Life Extension

[JesusA (imported)]

Nico Nagelkerke, a well-respected Dutch biostatistician and infectious disease epidemiologist, devoted a few paragraphs to Hamilton and Mestler's (1969) work on the castrated inmates of a Kansas state mental institution. Hamilton and Mestler compared age at death of 297 castrated White males with a matched set of 735 un-castrated White males in the same institution. They did not study the non-White castrated males and did not include those with Down's syndrome or any other conditions that could impair life expectancy. Those studied had been castrated over a period of several years at ages from 8 to 59. The average age of those castrated in 1898 was 12 and of those castrated in 1923 was 30.

Hamilton and Mestler noted that the castrated males in the institution lived an average of 14 years longer than those not castrated. The younger the age of castration, the greater the increase in life expectancy. Re-analyzing the data, Nagelkerke concluded that "there was a loss of 0.28 years of potential life for each year of delay in orchiectomy from 8 to 39 years of age."

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Nagelkerke, Nico J.D. (2012). Courtesans and Consumption: How Sexually Transmitted Infections Drive Tuberculosis Epidemics. Delft, Netherlands: Uitgeverij Eburon, pp. 99-101.

[vesal_mas (imported)]

Dear Jesus,

Just being attendant of the devil (dutch expression):

maybe it was just because they lived, without testosterone, a much safer life, without fighting or doing silly things that only young men with lots of testosterone do ?

This a side of non having sexually transmitted diseases ...

Vesal.

[DeaconBlues (imported)]

You do make a good point playing Devil's Advocate, or as you put it "attendant of the devil," but overall, I must disagree.

Years ago, I remember having a discussion about the extended longevity of eunuchs with a doctor friend of mine, I had told him of the "Hijra" eunuchs of India. They are eunuchs who masquerade as women, and make their living often by performing celebratory dances at weddings and parties... and often threatening clients who do not pay them for their dancing with "bad luck" and cursed futures, they beg, sometimes steal, generally they are looked down upon and held in low regard. Yet they LIVE longer than men, on the average they live 15 years longer.

My doctor friend pointed out that castration alone is quite possibly, even probably NOT the reason the Hijras live longer then men, he said that they dance, and probably must maintain better cardiac health, and being a poor and disparaged class they are probably not indulging in high fat diets, probably not spending money on unhealthy habits of smoking as much as intact men who have regular incomes. His points are good points, but they are not the only things to consider.

The simple and undeniable medical facts are that eunuchs have lower blood pressure. Also, the brains of eunuchs change physically, in particular the sections of the brain that control the body's auto-immune defense system are clearly in better development from the brains of intact males. And while it might not be a clear and objectively observed fact, throughout history eunuchs have been observed to be calmer and less prone to panic than men or women.

While I do acknowledge the points of the "Devils Advocates" who say that the behaviors of eunuchs and not the physiology is responsible for their longevity, I strongly disagree ultimately with their conclusion. I maintain that the castration alone will typically cause longer life, provided it is done at the right time in a eunuchs life and is done in a safe surgical manner.

[tjstill (imported)]

Testing a hypothesis like "castration increases lifespan" and basing the conclusions on results from data gathered from an experimentally uncontrolled population means that those conclusions are open to criticism and debate. It is difficult to put controls in place in these types of experiments.

The data from the institution has at least some potential to be considered controlled, the environment, food, smoking, drugs and social habits etc. are going to be at a similar levels for all inmates for a long period of time. I would suggest the institution data may stand up to some degree of analysis. No doubt this is why the authors thought it worthy of note. I feel any conclusions based on a study of the longevity of Hijra compared to the rest of the male population would be open to severe criticism due to the social disparity of the two groups.

I would caution anyone considering castration as a way to increase lifespan that they do some serious research into available data and check peer reviews. Anyone suggesting castration as a way to increase lifespan should be asked for the scientific data to back it up rather than accept their strong opinion.