U.S. Department of Health and Human Services NIH News National Institutes of Health Obesity Threatens to Cut U.S. Life Expectancy, New Analysis Suggests March 16, 2005 Over the next few decades, life expectancy for the average American could decline by as much as 5 years unless aggressive efforts are made to slow rising rates of obesity, according to a team of scientists supported in part by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The U.S. could be facing its first sustained drop in life expectancy in the modem era, the researchers say, but this decline is not inevitable if Americans — particularly younger ones — trim their waistlines or if other improvements outweigh the impact of obesity. The new report in the March 17, 2005 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine appears little more than a year after the DHHS unveiled a new national education campaign and research strategy to combat obesity and excessive weight. The new analysis, by S. Jay Olshansky, PhD, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Leonard Hayflick, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, Robert N. Butler, M.D., of the International Longevity Center in New York, and others* suggests that the methods used to establish life expectancy projections, which have long been based on historic trends, need to be reassessed. This reevaluation is particularly important, they say, as obesity rates surge in today's children and young adults. "Forecasting life expectancy by extrapolating from the past is like forecasting the weather on the basis of its history," Olshansky and his colleagues write. "Looking out the window, we see a threatening storm — obesity —that will, if unchecked, have a negative effect on life expectancy." Unlike historic life expectancy forecasts, which rely on past mortality trends, the Olshansky group bases their projection on an analy