Many of these studies and related conversations seem to presuppose that everyone wants to live to a ripe old age, or that the society with the highest life expectancy wins.

Clearly there is value to being fit and healthy throughout life, but there's also value to living in the moment. I've been enjoying cigars quite a bit recently, I'm not particularly interested in cutting that out of my life to weight the die a bit more in favor of a few more years on the planet. And I'm saying that as someone who was holding my wife as she took her last breaths after a ruthless and painful battle with cancer.

Problem is we all chip in to keep alive those choose to not lead healthy lives.

Should we stop treating lung cancer for lifelong smokers? Cardiovascular diseases for obese? We could use those resources to treat other diseases.

Or keep repairing athletes or those that part take in any sport?

I think Europe and Japan has to at some point come to terms that just how long are we willing to expand lives of the elderly. And at what cost?

As amateur cyclist who used to compete at relatively high level.. Sports, even amateur sports, is not healthy beyond certain point. Competitive amateurs probably reach that point much sooner because most of them don't have proper supervision and learn off youtube and friends.

Sports is good as long as it's „healthy mind in healthy body“ attitude. But beyond that...

"Everyone who doesn't first die of something else will die of cancer" is trivially true and doesn't offer any real insight. The particular timing and circumstances of death is often salient.

Correct! Worth checking the work of Gabor Mate on this. He claims that trauma is the key.

Dr. Gabor Maté appears to be a quack trying to sell some dubious books and courses. His hypotheses are not supported on an evidence-based medicine basis.

I thought that the emotional life-history pattern of cancer patients is quite well researched and linking trauma, anxiety and stress to cancer is not his hypothesis, he is just popularizing it.