I'm a little amazed myself. Sometimes it's all like a wonderful fantasy. Shapiro is being studied along with hundreds of other people over 95 and their children in one of several research projects around the world looking at the difference between those who live long and those who don't. There is not much medically interesting about Harry, which is what is interesting. But in fact, there's something about Harry that separates him from the friends he has seen pass away over the decades.
Most older people live with progressively debilitating illnesses for many years before they die.
But centenarians like Shapiro dispel the notion that people inevitably get sicker as they get older. Like Shapiro, these oldest survivors age slowly and disease-free. And scientists would love to know why. Most obvious is that centenarians almost invariably have at least one parent who lived past 80. Both of Shapiro's parents lived to 86, suggesting they passed on some kind of genetic rocket booster that most of us lack.