If someone could tell you when you were going to die, would you want to know? It’s no longer such a hypothetical question now that a “death index” can predict with 80 per cent accuracy whether or not someone over 50 is likely to die within four years.

Sei Lee, a geriatric specialist at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, California, designed a 12-question form based on data from nearly 20,000 people aged 50 and over, who took part in the US-wide Health and Retirement Survey between 1998 and 2002. Lee’s team looked at who had died by the …