concept

Gompertz–Makeham law of mortality

A formula describing how the risk of death rises with age in humans and many animals: the annual mortality risk equals an age-independent floor plus a term that grows exponentially with age. The floor is accidents, injury, violence. The exponential term is aging itself. In modern populations that term doubles the risk of death roughly every eight years past maturity. Writing it this way turns vague promises into three quite different claims: postpone illness while leaving the slope intact, reduce the slope, or delete the exponential term entirely. Only the third amounts to "halting aging", and in that case the mortality curve becomes flat — people still die, but only by accident.