Hendrikje van Andel, bristlecone pines, and why we die.

At the moment of writing this editorial (September 2004), the oldest living person in the world is Hendrikje van Andel. She celebrated her 114th birthday on June 29 of this year, and lives in an old people’s home in Hoogeveen, the Netherlands. When interviewed by the world press she cheerfully gave away her secret: a herring and a glass of orange juice a day. While survival beyond the age of 100 has become more common during the 20th century, survival beyond the age of 110 is still extremely rare, and survival beyond the age of 120 is practically non-existent. The eight years that still separate Hendrikje van Andel from the age at which world record holdster Jeanne Calment died in 1997, clearly illustrate how much of a ‘statistical outlier’ the latter was. Jeanne Calment was born in 1875 in the French town of Arles, where she lived all her life and encountered Vincent van Gogh in her father’s shop in the 1890s. “I’ve been forgotten by God”, is how she explained her miraculous survival that must have been a lonely experience indeed, as she survived her only grandson in 1963.1