[originaltext]INTERVIEWER: Professor McKay, can you tell me what you think your

INTERVIEWER: Professor McKay, can you tell me what you think your report on old people will achieve?
INTERVIEWEE: We hope that it will help to change people’s feelings about out age. The problem is that for too many of us believe that most old people are poor, sick, lonely and unhappy. As a result, we tend to find old people, as a group, unattractive. And this is very dangerous for our society.
INTERVIEWER: But surely we cannot escape the fact that many old people are lonely and many are sick.
INTERVIEWEE: No, we can’t. But we must also remember that the proportion of such people is no greater among the 60 to 70 age group than among tile 50 to 60 age group.
INTERVIEWER: In other words, there is no more mental illness, for example, among the 60’s to 70’s than among the 50’s to 60’s?
INTERVIEWEE: Right. And why should there be? Why should we expect people to suddenly change when they reach their 60th or 65th birthday any more than they did when they reached their 2Ft? Now that the computer age has arrived in industry, the normal age for retirement may be lowered to 60 or even 55. Shall we say that old age begins at 55?
INTERVIEWER: But one would expect there to be more physical illness among old people.
INTERVIEWEE: Why should one expect this? After all, people who reach the age of 65 or 70 are the strong among us. The weak die mainly in childhood, then in their 40’s and 50’s. Of course, some old people do suffer from physical illnesses, but these do not suddenly develop on their 65 birthday.  People who are healthy in middle age tend to be healthy in old age, just as one would expect.
INTERVIEWER: Are people’s mental abilities affected by old age?
INTERVIEWEE: Certain changes do take place as we grow older, but this happens throughout life. Those changes are very gradual, and happen at different times with different people. But, in general, if you have seen how a person deals with problems, you will easily recognize him in old age.
INTERVIEWER: So that someone who enjoys new experiences in his middle years will usually continue to do so into old age?
INTERVIEWEE: Exactly. We have carried out some very interesting experiments in which one group of old people agreed to attend evening classes for a year to study English and Mathematics. In fact, most of this group become so interested in their studies that they continued them for another year, and most of them steadily improve their ability to communicate in both the written and the spoken language.
INTERVIEWER: What about the group who studied mathematics?
INTERVIEWEE: Well, that’s a different story. There seems to be no doubt that people find maths more difficult as they grow older. Though why this is so, I cannot say.