I am afraid neither anecdotes of Costa Ricans nor graphs demonstrating relative risk have any value. Nobody denies the ageing process decreases health and increases risk. The question is when is it unsafe, and that depends on absolute risk. Over on the medical forum pilots post daily about losing their medical for what they see as minor or irrelevant pathology not understanding their illness has increased the absolute risk of incapacitation above the magic level (The UK CAA allows an unrestricted Class 1 eg for cancer with a 0.1% annual risk, and a Class 1 OML with a 1% annual risk!!). Yet on ageism threads the same population of pilots (and possibly even the same posters!) trash science claiming pilots should be grounded on age when the absolute risk is now well below what it was 20 yeas ago and more importantly below that magic number