USA: Is "Old Age" an Actual Cause of Death?

. HARTFORD, Connecticut / The Hartford Courant / Notes / June 19, 2009 It's Alive By William Weir Japan's Tomoji Tanabe has died at the of 113, listed by the Guinness Book of World Records, as the oldest man alive. Occasionally, when the reigning oldest person dies, the official cause is listed as "old age." This raises some debate, since the official list of causes of death in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) doesn't include "old age." Organ failure, disease, there's always a specific cause, however old the decedent. But some medical professionals say listing a particular cause of death for the very old skews how we read statistics. Is it fair to say that a particular disease kills so many people per year if some of those are so old that they were likely to be killed by something else shortly after? The ICD-10, does have the term "senescence," which more or less means "old age." When I wrote an article on this a couple of years ago, Connecticut's deputy medical examiner Edward T. McDonough, says he tends to list "senescence" as cause of death for people when they're in their 90s or over 100. In this case, heart failure was listed as Mr. Tanabe's cause of death. Taking over as the world's oldest man is Henry Allingham of England.[rc] William Weir is a Features reporter for the Hartford Courant. He has no training in either science or psychology. Nonetheless, he finds himself scouring journals of such and then telling anyone within earshot about various studies that he finds interesting. This blog, highlighting some of the more curious endeavors in the world of science and psychology, seems a good outlet for this habit. E-Mail: bweir@courant.com