E. – What was the next stage of the investigation?
V. – I invited a young mathematician, Nikolay Zak, to help me analyze the existing datasets on supercentenarians and see if Jeanne could fit in. He has found that she could not. The models developed by him claimed that if we rely on the laws of statistics, Jeanne as a phenomenon should not exist. It was such a big surprise to Nikolay that he decided to personally revalidate this case. His French is fairly good, so he reached out to the holders of the archives in Arles, found some volunteers there, and started to check every small detail.
V. – You know, on most of the occasions when I raised the issue with my colleagues, their first counterargument was “How could an error or even a deception take place if Jeanne lived in a small city where people knew one another very well?” It turns out that this was a misconception, as Arles was one of the biggest French communes at that time with 38 thousand people (even now, not every Moscow satellite city has that many people), and apart from that, Jeanne didn’t live in the city all the time; she and her daughter often spent their time in a homestead 16 kilometers away from Arles. The more that Nikolay checked, the more that small inconsistencies, errors, and even signs of intentional fraud were revealed. After looking at all the data that Nikolay has managed to collect, including the known intentional destruction of the family archive on Jeanna’s orders, we developed a hypothesis that is now being checked. In 1934, there was a death in the Calment family. The official story is that in 1934, Jeanne had lost her only daughter, Yvonne. We think that in reality it was Jeanne who had died, aged almost 59, and her daughter took her name and personality.
E. – Detective work teaches us that a person who is suspected to have broken the law should have had some sort of motive for that.
V. – Indeed, and there was a motive. The 1930s were dire years for the family. Her mother in law and her father both died in 1931, and the family had to pay huge inheritance taxes in each case. Unlike their levels at the beginning of the century, these taxes were up to 35% of the property’s cost, as the government was likely preparing for the next world war. We could expect the family to be in quite a miserable financial situation. If Jeanne had died, her daughter Yvonne and her husband would have to pay a lot of money. However, if it were Yvonne who died, the family wouldn’t have to pay any taxes, as she didn’t own the homestead.
Dealing with the archive… or its absence
E. – Is there more precise proof that Yvonne has replaced Jeanne?
V. – We suspect that the passport of Jeanne, which was issued by the French gendarmerie in the 1930s, can be considered to be proof of replacement. The features described in the passport, such as eye color and height, do not correspond to the features of Jeanne when she was old. There is another interesting fact, too. In case of death, the usual formal procedures require a witness to look at the body and sign the statement of death. How you would do it normally, if one of your relatives would suddenly die? You would spare yourself the effort and would call some neighbors, I guess. This was not the case, as an old stranger living far away was invited instead. When I say old, I mean around 70 years old, and, at that time, this could have meant a lot of health issues, including sight problems. Why invite total strangers from far away, and why should they be old?
E. – Yes, this sounds weird. Right, these are suspicious documents, but if we are talking about a family conspiracy, there should be some unconscious leaks in their behavior or speech.
V. – There are, of course. For instance, Yvonne’s husband Joseph Charles Frédéric Billot never got remarried, despite the fact that he was only 42 at the moment of her “death”. There were many mentions that he was getting along very well with Jeanne and they were raising Yvonne’s son Frédéric Jean Paul together. You would expect a husband to treat his own wife well, wouldn’t you? The kid, by the way, was calling Jeanne “mamzanne”, that is, Mom Jeanne. It also looks unusual. Next, Jeanne used to mention the maid that took her to school. Nikolay has found the date of birth of this maid, Marthe Fousson, in the birth certificate, and year of birth in the census of 1911, and it turns out that she was 10 years younger than Jeanne, which means that she could only be taking her daughter Yvonne to school. Hunting was an important part of her lifestyle, but the age of her first hunt jumped around impressively in the span of 20 years.
E. – Documents, behavior, anything else?
V. – The last test was based on the photos. As you know, even if people age, most proportions of the face, such as the distance between the eyes, the nose shape, and the level of the hairline in women don’t change. Some of them don’t change at all, as they are defined by the skull shape. Nikolay suggested placing the pictures of young and old Jeanne together and seeing if the proportions match. It turns out that the features of the young Yvonne match the features of the old Jeanne. However, when you compare the features of the young Jeanne to the old Jeanne, they don’t match. Surprising, isn’t it?
E. – A finding of this scale should have shaken the academic community. How did your fellow researchers of aging respond to the preliminary results of the investigation?
V. – There was some initial skepticism, but after a proper exchange of data with my Russian and foreign colleagues, there is a growing interest in seeing the results of this investigation. The president of the
Gerontological Society of RAS, Vladimir Anisimov, encourages us to keep investigating until we find the truth. As you probably know, the main professional organization that is performing validation is the
Gerontology Research Group. It is currently led by Robert D. Young, who is also a Senior Consultant for Gerontology at
Guinness World Records. I was very pleased with his interest and support. Working together, we will hopefully come to a definitive conclusion sooner.
E. – It is nice to learn that the community is open to the idea of revalidation.
V. – Indeed. However, I am asking myself why the revalidation was not initiated earlier, as the more you dig, the more questions arise. I have found a hint to a possible explanation in the book “
L’assurance et ses secrets” (Insurance and its secrets) by Jean-Pierre Daniel that was published in 2007. Here it is:
V. – “Chacun se souvient de Jeanne Calment officiellement morte à 122 ans, le 4 août 1997, Il avait été dit à l’époque que cette dame bénéficiait d’une rente viagère, ce qui etait vrai. Celle-ci etait versée par une grande société française que cette longévité exceptionelle ne réjouissait pas. La société était d’autant plus marrie qu’elle savait pertinemment qu’elle ne payait pas Jeanne Calment, mais sa fille. En effect, au décès de la vraie Jeanne Calment, sa fille qui évidemment n’était plus une gamine, avait endossé l’identité de sa mère pour continuer à toucher la rente. La société d’assurance avait découvert l’usurpation d’identité, mais en accord – ou à la demande ? – des pouvoirs publics, elle n’avait pas souhaité la dénoncer tant le personnage de la “doyenne des Français” était devenu mythique.”
V. – “Everyone remembers Jeanne Calment, who has officially died at age 122 on August 4, 1997. It was said at the time that this lady had benefited from having a life annuity, which was true. This was paid by a large French company that was not happy at all with this exceptional longevity. The company was even more upset as it knew that it had been paying not Jeanne Calment, but her daughter. In reality, after the death of the real Jeanne Calment, her daughter who obviously was no longer a child, had taken her mother’s identity to keep receiving the annuity. The insurance company had discovered identity theft, but in agreement with – or on the demand of? – the public authorities, it had not wished to reveal the truth, given how much the character of the “grandmother of the French” had become legendary.”
E. – So, there were some players involved who would apparently prefer to protect the image of a national hero, even if it meant sacrificing the accuracy of data used for scientific studies?
V. – It could be. However, I would also consider another prerequisite for this particular situation. It is a lack of focusing on the most important goals and lack of a spirit of rebellion in the scientific community. I’ll explain why I think so. What is the main goal of gerontology as a science? It is to help people remain healthy and live longer. If you are setting this as a goal, it is obvious that you could not stand it if the data on your hands were questionable. If you want science to progress and to bear fruit such as reliable lifestyle recommendations or a new drug to slow down aging, even a slight suspicion should be enough to spark further investigation in order to make the data as robust as possible. A spirit of rebellion is absolutely necessary to be able to follow your scientific intuition despite the accepted views.
E. – Rebellion, I like that! Well, what will be the next step of your investigation? Do you plan to contact Guinness World Records to let them know that the case of Jeanne Calment likely requires revalidation?
V. – We already sent them our materials and are waiting for a reply. Right now, we need to exchange more information with our colleagues at the GRG, as they are the most experienced group in the world when it comes to longevity validation. Ideally, the next step is to prepare and publish scientific peer-reviewed articles with all the information that we have been able to collect.
E. – In your opinion, what is the main lesson of this story?
V. – Well, to be completely honest, the main lesson is still to be learned. You see, the current buzz around longevity records can be easily distracting us from the goals that are truly important. I’d really want this story to be reduced to a revalidation by a qualified group of researchers and to an update of all corresponding books. In my view, it just does not deserve the hype. There was a mistake, we will correct it, and that is it. We will be seeing new longevity records again and again; it will never stop, because there is no proven limit of human healthspan and lifespan.
V. – There are many signs, however, that both healthspan and lifespan can largely depend on the medical technologies that we have. The population is aging very fast, and I believe that we need to focus our efforts on developing and testing the interventions that would effectively bring aging under medical control in humans. This is priority number one for Russian gerontology. If we let things of relatively small practical value, such as the discussion of longevity records and the personal stories behind them, become a talk show and distract us beyond measure, we may come to 2050 completely unprepared. There will be 2 billion people who are 60 years old and older by that time, which is 1/4 of the global population. How are we supposed to cope with the overload of our healthcare system without powerful therapies that can address the underlying mechanisms of aging and thus prevent and cure age-related diseases? We need to undertake preemptive steps. We need honesty, courage, openness and the ability to act fast in creating these innovative treatments. We need the flexibility to find new ways and bypass obstacles. We need cool heads. This is what we truly need, and we need it right now.
V. – There are many signs, however, that both healthspan and lifespan can largely depend on the medical technologies that we have. The population is aging very fast, and I believe that we need to focus our efforts on developing and testing the interventions that would effectively bring aging under medical control in humans. This is priority number one for Russian gerontology. If we let things of relatively small practical value, such as the discussion of longevity records and the personal stories behind them, become a talk show and distract us beyond measure, we may come to 2050 completely unprepared. There will be 2 billion people who are 60 years old and older by that time, which is 1/4 of the global population. How are we supposed to cope with the overload of our healthcare system without powerful therapies that can address the underlying mechanisms of aging and thus prevent and cure age-related diseases? We need to undertake preemptive steps. We need honesty, courage, openness and the ability to act fast in creating these innovative treatments. We need the flexibility to find new ways and bypass obstacles. We need cool heads. This is what we truly need, and we need it right now.
4 Comments
Paul Wakfer
December 8, 2018
Elena Milova
December 8, 2018
James Larrick
December 8, 2018
Sami Malmström
December 9, 2018