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begins just with life, albeit usually extremely slowly. The value
1 means an
integral and definitive presence of illness that happens only at the individual's exitus.
On the other hand, the value t is expressed in years. We have taken an interval from
0 to 80, because 80 years old is an approximation to the average duration of the
life of a human being in modern countries of the occidental culture.
μ
I
(
x
)=
In the next
paragraphs we present some examples of Life Illness Curves.
Fig. 20.2
LIC of a healthy person
(
)
remains
low for almost the entire life of the person and only in the last months of his/her life
the organism looses its healthy state.
Figure 20.2 shows a LIC of a normal, healthy individual. The value
μ
x
I
Fig. 20.3
LIC of a patient suffering Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Lou Gehrig's case.
Figure 20.3 represents the evolution in time of a patient affected by amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis (ALS), where the value
remains low and normal until the dis-
ease's debut that leads into a relatively quick outcome [2]. This figure represents
μ
I
(
x
)
