Abstract
Mortality kinetics of various animal species and failure kinetics of industrial components and materials are in variance with Gompertz’s law or law of exponentially increasing force of mortality. A pair of straight lines is in general obtained on a semilogarithmic plot, one for the first part of the cumulative mortality curve, up to its inflection point, the other, for the second part of the survivorship curve, after its inflection point. It is concluded that after a certain species-characteristic age, force of mortality and probability of death cease to increase exponentially with age, with the exception of certain human populations, and remain constant at a high level on the average for the remainder of the life span.
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Economos, A.C. A non-Gompertzian paradigm for mortality kinetics of metazoan animals and failure kinetics of manufactured products. AGE 2, 74–76 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02432250
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02432250