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No Cap On Life Expectancy?
Samarkind writes "An article over at Science Daily (no registration req'd) talks about the average life expectancy for people going up all over the world by an average of 3 months per year. They also say that the somewhat pervasive idea that people can only live so long just isn't true. The kicker that I got from the article was that the average life expectancy for men is 65... isn't that about when I'll retire?" Remember the life expectancy includes all the people who die at age 2 or 15 or 21. If you make it past 25 or so, you've got good odds to make it to 80.
We need to get that up to over 1 year per year.
One shortcoming of the article is that the cause for the increase is not stated. Many causes for increasing life expectancy have no implications regarding a maximum lifespan. If all we're doing is reducing early deaths through improved vaccinations and safety, then we've made no progress in disproving the idea of a maximum lifespan.
Another way of looking at it would be: The life expectancy for people born today is higher than for people born twenty years ago. That doesn't mean that the life expectancy for people who are 60 today is any better than the life expectancy for people who were 60 twenty years ago.
CmdrTaco is going to implement a life expectency cap in Slash 2.4. Too many life expectency whores running experiments...
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
...I plan on living forever.
So far, so good.
-Adam
So if the conclusions of this study are true, not only should we see life expectancy continue to rise, but we should be frequently setting new records for the oldest living human.
A few years ago, the oldest person in modern history died in France at an age something like 122. Will that record be 150 in a hundred years?
Unfortunately, accurate age information was not available for the general population until the previous century, so we don't really know what the change in that record has been for a statistically-valid period of time. (Besides, when looking at one in billions, it's hard to say you're being statistically valid.)
it's amazing how by excluding any demographic-based criterion when presenting data you can make it totally meaningless. it means nothing- no human is accurately represented as it's simply too broad. o_O
"Life is great; without it, you'd be dead." -Harmony Korine
The fact that our life expectancy continues to increase may simply indicate our lifespans haven't yet hit their "terminal velocity" (as determined by biological/environmental factors).
In other words, they ain't dropping us from high enough yet. =)
Its good that our lifespans are increasing, however with the current over-population issues, this is a definate double-edge sword. With increased lifespans, we'd have to rework retirement since theres no way that the workforce can support a massive increase in elderly people. The current age for retirement is suited for the current 'normal' lifespan, but would fall apart if we started living 80+ years on average. The economy works because a majority of your population is either working or going to be working. If that balance shifted, where the non-working force was greater than that of the current working force, the problems would be endless. With increased lifespan must come increased retirement. But as we know, most people are definately ready for retirement by 60, and their bodies (and their state of being) is what determines this. If we could both increase lifespan *AND* reduce the aging of the body over that period of time, we would have the best of both worlds. This is by no means impossible, but will really determine if long-living en-mass is a real possibility or not.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
... just what this planet needs to help out with the overpopulation problems.
Give a man a match, you keep him warm for an evening.
Light him on fire, he's warm for the rest of his life
Anyway, apparantly some species of turtle do not age. The only apparent change in their physiology is that the lay more eggs as they grow older. They apparently get smarter, as well. The enzyme that prevents cancer cells from dying of old age seem to give the turtle cells a boost when they are young, but they still don't get cancer, or other age-related diseases. We might break the 1-year/year barrier, yet! :)
Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
wish that they'd come out with "worse" statistics.
Then maybe I'd quit this filthy habit that I've grown to love called smoking....
I wonder what the average lifespan is doing for those of us in the cancer-stick habit?
Karnal
...but what is more important is maintaining a decent quality of life as we age. There's a Greek myth about the goddess Eos, who falls in love with a mortal and asks Zeus to make him immortal. Alas, she neglected to ask that he also stay youthful. He continued to age but death could not reach him.
I have several friends who are caring for parents with Alzheimers and other diseases that don't kill right away but that destroy life in the most fundamental way. I know other elderly people who have suffered heart attacks and strokes and are all there mentally, but are in constant pain and have to severely restrict their activities. A few decades ago these diseases would have killed their victims. Now they wound them and often leave them in a state like poor Tithonus, lover of Eos.
I certainly wouldn't wish an earlier death on any of these people, rather I hope that the medical establishment can come up with ways to help people stay active, lucid, and happy as their bodies age beyond the point that most people reached in the past. This is as important as, perhaps more important than, extending life.
No sig? Sigh...
What's the difference between average age of death and life expectancy? Average age of death seems pretty much irrelevant for someone that hasn't just been born. I'd be much more interested in a chart of what age you are mapped acrossed the projected average age of death. What is the average age of death after you start constricting the sample to people with the same attributes as you, especially people that didn't die as infants? Seperating male from female doesn't tell us all that much that we can make assumptions based on.
Heard somewhere that braincells are only supposed to live about 120 years.
In other words the problem with longer lifespans is that other people besides you get to live longer too.
-- SIGFPE
Well, after I live forever, I'm gonna learn how to fly.
Have you read my journal today?
You're already close to death. I could picture myself living a long time, if such were possible. 100, 500, 1000 years, or longer. but it's not gonna happen.
Support your family and the things you believe in, and you will have done as much to fullfill your destiny as there is possible.
First off, some background information. If you take a normal cell, it won't live forever. However, a cancer cell will, provided it is fed. Cancer cells are mutated so they don't respond to feedback mechanisms from other cells, but their most important feature is in their replication.
Does anyone remember early versions of napster? Due to bugs, it wouldn't transmit the last few bytes of every file. For an mp3 file, that meant the mp3 info tag might be missing, or the last few seconds. But what if the copies kept getting resent? Every time, the file would get progresively shorter, and eventually, you'd notice it.
The same thing happens in cells. Due to the DNA replication method, the last few base pairs at the end of the strand aren't duplicated. That's ok, since the ends are basically unused spare buffers. Eventually, the buffer will be used up, and the DNA will get fucked up, and the cell won't be able to duplicate anymore.
Cancer cells have an enzyme called telomerase that adds back to the buffer, allowing it to divide forever.
Of course, there are also other factors that contribute to a finite life span on the cellular level.
There are non-cellular factors to aging as well. For example, collagen (skin) has the cystene amino acid. Cystene contains sulfer, and as you age, the dulfer forms cross links. The result is obvious if you compare geristric skin to newborn skin.
Additionally, the human body is designed for a limited life span. The thymus (important for the immune system) starts atrophying in the late teens, and is useless as your appendix by age 30 or so.
So, while cellular life can be extended, for a complex organism like us, I'd say there is a cap on life expectancy.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Don't believe michael's rather dubious math. Only slightly greater than half of American men at age 65 will live to 80. And lots of people die between 25 and 65.
It's not exactly a sure thing at 25, especially if you smoke, travel frequently, eat carelessly, or spend all day in front of your computer (oops!). ^_^
Two cock in my pussy! It feel so good!
It will take more than an expanding shell of von Neumann probes to achieve the organisational complexity the biosphere has achieved on this planet, so we still need techno sapiens to leave this nest (for cyberspace and/or outerspace as quickly as possible) returning the evolution of terrestrial systems in non technological hands.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
According to actuarial math, if people were immortal, and could only die from accidents (like, for example, decapitation would kill you), the average lifespan would be 650 years.
Biologists generally assume that there is a pretty hard limit on life expectancy somewhere around 120 years, based on observed limits on the number of divisions cells can undergo. Maybe that will turn out to be false and stem cells can somehow escape those limits. But the population studies so far aren't able to invalidate that hypothesis.
No evidence at hand, but I suppose you could figure it out from the actuarial tables, etc.
In the US, given the current accident rates in the US, the average death life expectancy (based on accidents alone) would probably be about 1500 years. (based on the idea it would take 3000 plus years to kill off a population of 100,000)
Outside the US your milage may vary.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Perhaps a simple way to de-age is to get telomerase to only work on good, healthy cells.
Dave, http://www.deep-trance.com