Here's another Economist chart depicting one good reason that we are living longer - we are winning the war against cancer! We are seeing close to 100% five year survival rate for some types of cancer thanks to drug innovation and medical advances. As you might know, cancer is not one disease but actually many different types of ailment manifested in different ways. Some are caused by viruses while others are related to lifestyle choices like smoking, eating too much red meat, exposure to carcinogens and what not. But advances in medicine is slowly but steadily postponing death. The amazing drugs launched in recent years help to activate our own immune system to fight cancer cells by successfully labelling them with ingenious techniques - which unfortunately is beyond me to explain how and why in detail. What I know is that reason why we had failed to tackle cancer ......