Three Score and ten.

Capt'n Midnight

For all those who expect modern medicine to enable them to live forever have a look at this.

http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/causes.html Causes of Death

Look how little the life expectancy of a person who survives to 40 has changed since 1850 !

In the last 150 years there has been a shift in the major cause of death from infectious & preventable/treatable conditions to the degenerative diseases of old age. Thus the most dramatic increase in life expectancy has occurred for the youngest ages. Conversely, the life expectancy for a 70-year-old has not increased much in the last 150 years.
...
As a result, people are increasingly surviving to an elderly 70-90 years of age and then dying of heart disease, cancer or degenerative disease.

Peculiarly, from age 95 to 105 the annual death rate does not change for each given year.

(Only 26% of smokers live to age 80 -- in contrast with 57% of nonsmokers [ADDICTION 97:15-28 (2002)] )

So not smoking is yer best bet !

Tree

and being old