It is well known that life expectancy can be expressed as an integral of the survival curve. The reverse - that the survival function can be expressed as an integral of life expectancy - is also true.

Vaupel (1998) posed the provocative question, “When it comes to death, how do people and flies differ from Toyotas?†He suggested that as the force of natural selection diminishes with age, structural reliability concepts can be profitably used in mortality analysis. Vaupel (2003) went...