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New Study Suggests There's a Limit To How Long People Can Live (go.com)
Life expectancies have risen in many countries around the world thanks to breakthroughs in medical treatment and sanitation in the last century. The maximum age of death has also increased. But as these numbers continue to rise, it raises the question as to how long can people live? ABC News reports: The record for the world's oldest person is 122 years and the odds of shattering that record are slim, according to an analysis published Wednesday in the journal Nature. In the new study, researchers [at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York] analyzed mortality data from a global database. They found that while there have been strides in reducing deaths among certain groups -- children, women during childbirth and the elderly -- the rate of improvement was slower for the very old, those over 100 years old. Next they examined how old centenarians were when they died. The record holder is Jeanne Calment, of France, who lived until 122 years old. Since her death in 1997, no one has broken her record. The researchers calculated the odds of someone reaching 125 years in a given year are less than 1 in 10,000. They think the human life span more likely maxes out at 115 years. Some aging specialists said the study doesn't take into account advances that have been made in extending the life span -- and health -- of certain laboratory animals including mice, worms and flies through genetic manipulation and other techniques. The goal is to eventually find treatments that might slow the aging process in humans and keep them healthier longer.
Genesis 6:3 NIV
Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
115 max lifespan? I didn't know that, I thought with all the advancements we'd be able to live longer. Now I REALLY have to move out of my mom's basement, I don't have much time left to socialize...
I thought this was a solved concept. Telomeres shorten based on cellular division and eventually the cells just don't divide anymore. The net effect is that the body stops replenishing itself and voila, old age. Unless you do something about that...
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I would much rather die healthy, sane and in the middle of doing something I love at age 90 than I want to be a drooling vegetable that needs help to do even the most basic chores like wipe myself after a visit to the toilet but living to the age of 130.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
"The record for the world's oldest person is 122 years... They think the human life span more likely maxes out at 115 years."
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I'm surprised that the article doesn't touch on telomers at all.
A similar study, performed with all available data in Portugal and Spain in 1490, would confirm zero percent chance of successful crossing of the Atlantic ocean to a western shore.
Thought the récord holder was this man from Indonesia. He is suposed to be145 years old now. http://jakarta.coconuts.co/2016/08/25/what-i-want-die-145-year-old-indonesian-man-mbah-gotho-ready-pass
Nature doesn't want people (or any animal) to live past the point where it is producing offspring and launching them into the world. Most animals have been bred to die, because this is advantageous to the species as a whole.
However, the limitations are largely artificial - we can see that some few animals are essentially immortal. Selective breeding in insects achieves dramatic improvements in just a few generations. IIRC, they tried this with fruit flies - by the simple measure of only allowing older and older females to breed - and they tripled the lifespan in just a few generations. Higher mammals have the same cellular machinery.
Of course, as soon as anyone talks about selective breeding in humans, well... Even if we could experiment with selective breeding for longevity (perhaps something along the lines of Heinlein's book, it is a sure route to massive resentment and probably mass murder Apparently, if we cannot give a benefit to everyone, then we are not allowed to give it to anyone.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
The article's title was intriguing, and since this is a scientific publication, one could expect to see scientific data showing that human life spans can't keep increasing. Scientific and medical knowledge is growing at a very high rate, but the article doesn't address this. Rather, it looks at the age of oldest people who die each year, and calculates a trend for this using cubic splines. If you ignore the trend lines (e.g., because they represent who knows what kind of underlying model) and look at the data, it seems to support the idea that the age of the oldest people in the world has been rising. Just saying.
46 years ago I took a college course on senescence. George Sacher developed an equation that calculated the maximum life span for any species, based on five factors. There are always a tiny number of exceptions to the rule. Humans were calculated to, on average, have a maximum life span of 120 year. This "new" study seems to be rediscovering old information.
There are almost 7 billion people on the planet, so I would expect 7000000000 / 10000 = 700000 people to turn 125 every year.
Maybe they meant the odds were 0, since no one is currently 124, and you can't magically turn 125 without first turning 124.
"They think the human life span more likely maxes out at 115 years."
"The record holder is Jeanne Calment, of France, who lived until 122 years old."
There is actually a comic about you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We have people deeply concerned about colonizing the universe because of their concern for the species. You just need to show them a picture of a rocket and they whip out their Space Bible and spout the same old doomsday Asteroid verses.
What about your individual life? Don't you want to live long enough to explore the universe yourself? Where are the life extension nutters?
With human generated atmospheric radiation and pollution, I think the max age number will be on a downward trend in the near future (100 years).
If I write down a metric ton of bullshit, I will be right a handful of times, too. That's by no means different than various conspiracy nuts throwing about the most harebrained ideas, and should once in a blue moon one of those insane ramblings actually have something to do with reality, they act as if they knew everything all along, ignoring those thousands of times they simply spouted bullshit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hey I just noticed what you wrote can be used on any site, u mind if I copy it to use on Soylentnews?
Yes, sure, that's why Jeanne Calment lived to 122.
Not to mention that whole 930-years thing laid out in chapter five of the Book of Genesis (OT.) But by all means, pick the passages that support the pop culture blather of the day, and ignore the rest.
The Lord is clearly all-powerful... and innumerate. Or dishonest. Or fiction.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What about the Indonesian man who's 145 years old?
"Knock the stones together, guys!"
For each 15 years that the average human life is extended, the world population increases by 2 billion through the effect of "population fillup ". Don't believe it, just watch this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E
If they just ported gnu/people to Adobe Flash they would never die
Argh! Trump will outlive us all!
Telomeres are only a small part of the puzzle, a sometimes overaggressive limiter to stop division in cells with other types of damage build up (such as those which can cause cancer) even if the more normal limiters have been mutated/broken. There are several other facets, the ones I know about include DNA damage caused cell senescence, build ups of damaged/miss-folded proteins, loss/alteration of the (epigenetic) tagging of the DNA, and tissues that can not be fully repaid even with healthy cells(eg cartilage). As such I think that the ability to produce new cells from a "corrected" genome as well as some improvements in affecting cell death regulation systems and tissue engineering is the minimum for busting these limits, the brain probably is not the first limit but it will also need special handling(Alzheimer's falls under protein miss-folding but just replacing the cells might lead to memory or even personality loss).
In detail-
DNA damage to either the nuclear genome or the mitochondrial genome eventually cause you problems, like cancer or mitochondrial dysfunction, as such you still get a build up of not dead but not dividing damaged cells and this build up also has effects on the environment including the behaviour of non damaged cells and is part of ageing.
Certain conditions which appear to become more likely in older(perhaps more worn out) cells cause build up of miss-folded protein, this can have toxic affects on the cell so when cells detect too much miss-folded protein they try to clear it, but failure to do so will eventually lead to cell death.
The genome in your cells is tagged with markers such as methyl groups attached to certain letters, these have effects on the use of the DNA by effecting it's "look" to possible binding factors. This acts, usually suppressing the binding of the factor, to stop inappropriate use of location specific genes as well as suppressing innate genetic parasites within the genome. These markers can be washed off in replication or simply lost and not perfectly replaced, causing cell misbehaviour or damage.
Even if your cells had perfect self-repair your tissues are made up of cells inside a matrix of proteins (and other stuff) that they have created as you grew. Recreating this when it is worn or otherwise damaged is not always something that can be done by our natural bodies because our cells are only equipped to get it right first time, building and repairing the same structure are different "skills". Cartilage in particular seems to be a problem for us. To be able to produce good replacement cartilage you need to be able to produce the right sort of protein matrix and lay it out in the correct way if it is wrong or jumbled when it should be ordered you get weak cartilage like expecting a pile of girders to produce a good building. This is hard, we are working on doing it outside the body, but persuading internal repair is currently beyond us.
From the article, this is not an estimate of upper max based on species capability, biological understanding of the aging process, or knowledge and subsequent realistic & accepted explanation of the limitations. They just graphed the current max age on a year by year basis and noticed that the last 20 years or so, there seems to be a plateau. At least in the countries that keep good track of age of citizens over the last 150 years or so.
Even with poor or missing data, we can see that if we used this same technique in say, 1700, the expected max age would look a bit different. At one time, our expected max age was 30!
Using a study like this to claim knowledge about the limits of age is like using a crime statistics study in the us to prove that certain minority groups are *genetically* prone to be criminals, and about exactly as useful.
As mankind progresses and continues to innovate in the fields of medicine, biology, sociology, psychology, and technology, we'll keep pushing this limit, perhaps in fits and starts, but it'll continue to advance. That is, unless there's some difficult-to-impossible ACTUAL limitation that we hit. A study of statistics like this might hint at *a* current barrier, but this doesn't identify, describe, or explain it. It certainly can't claim it's the *final* barrier.
"as these numbers continue to rise, it raises the question as to how long can people live?" Thank you for not saying, "it begs the question" I'm so tired of hearing/reading that used in the wrong context. Dang grammar girl website ruined it for me. I was in ignorant bliss for years.
Oldest person currently alive is 145
http://www.syracuse.com/us-news/index.ssf/2016/09/worlds_oldest_man_145-year-old_indonesian_man_smokes_outlived_four_wives_video.html
Biggest reason for early death is heart reaching max beats.
Most other organs seemingly have no harsh limits outside of the integumentary system. (Skin, flesh, hait,etc.)
Brain failures are mostly down to shitty genes or diet. There are plenty of ancient people in the hundreds with perfectly fine brain health overall.
Muscular failure mainly being lack of activity or abusive levels of activity. (Gym morons)
Immune system failure seems to be easily reversed with a 3-day fast. Whether this works in older people is yet to be tested.
Young-blood donations can also boost health in older people where fasting isn't possible. Not sure if this is being / has been tested further.
Regardless, our meddling with biochemistry and nature already isn't 'natural', we've been living past our natural average for a while now.
With gene editing already here and advancing every year, even old people will benefit from advances. (Given they live to see it)
Genetic immortality is known to exist in nany niches of nature.
The problems these creatures overcame will be found out one day.
The biggest failure of immortal creatures was resource exhaustion. That's why cell-death evolved, ones that died had niches that could thrive on the dead. Then cell cooperation became possible later, aka multicellular life.
But immortality isn't exclusive from cell cooperation. Far from it.
DNA replication that is perfect and repeatable to infinity can exist.
We'll likely be dead before it comes, but there is an extremely high chance your kids will touch an immortal human in their lifetimes. 60-100 years is a very long time in research.
Unless we nuke ourselves back to 2000bc. (Also extremely likely)
As a retired traveling salesman who is currently living out his "golden years" in beautiful Myrtle Beach, SC, I have plenty of spare time. In recent years, too much of this spare time has been spent on Slashdot. I have spent hour upon hour arguing with many of you, and I have done so because your opinions are, quite frankly, wrong. And it has become clear that all of this arguing has been in vain, because you are beyond hope.
Just out of curiosity, do those of you who post wrong opinions know that you're wrong, and you keep posting them just to get under the skin of those of us who are right? Or do you honestly believe some of this nonsense? Either way, I'm done trying to shine the light of reason. Frankly, I have had it. I have had it up to here with all of this tenacious, bull-headed piggishness. To my many friends, I bid you a fond farewell. To my copious enemies, I inform you that you won't have Chuck Wilson to kick around any more. I've absorbed all of the abuse that I can take. Rest assured that as soon as I hit "Log out", I will head for greener pastures. I'll not be back.
To all my friends and enemies: well done ... well done.
Why do men die before their wives?
They want to.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
It is just an observation without any scientific input to it. If you open few Guiness book of world records, you would conclude the same. 4000 years old literature of India puts good lifespan of human as 100 years.
But no every few weeks there's an articlr about how tech folks think we can live forever or how the first person who will live to be 1000 years olr is alive today. NOPE. all bullshit. Nobody alive today will even live to see 200.
I wonder how many people capable of living to 123 (or more) died to something like war or car crashes?
I eat foods with lots of preservatives so I can live longer. I expect to live to 150.
The simulation programmers used a signed int8 to represent age.
"Challenge accepted." -- Dick "El Diablo" Cheney
Genesis 6:3 NIV
Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
I give you Genesis 3:21: And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”
I read that as a biblical promise that somewhere out there we can find the knowledge of what is so poetically called the "tree of life", and live forever.
Genesis is an interesting book anyway. Genesis 2:21 tells us that So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man.
Men have the same number of ribs as women. The critical difference is that men have a Y-chromosome... which is like an X-chromosome, but with one rib less.
"the first person to live to the age of 200 has already been born. I believe I am that person."
bonus points if you name the show!
Well I've given the family tied up in my basement just two more days
Says the planet.
Really, do we want people to live longer? They're talking about raising the retirement age, they say there's no money for SSI, Medicare, corporate CEO's and Wall Street raided pension funds back in the 1990's.
There's only so many Wall Mart greeter's needed. Who's going to care for these old folks?
Right now, half the planet goes to bed hungry, 20% of the children in Arizona where I live are food insecure. In the USA.
What problem does extending human lifespans solve?
Fear of death? Get over it, you're going to die, it's not a bad thing, you will return your energy to the Universe(s) and in a trillion years it will all happen again.
I never knew the bible was metric. I always thought it was some weird base-12 bullshit.
Quality of life is far more important than quantity of life. I'd rather have a short high quality life than a neverending life where I just get more and more broken down, worn out, and diseased, to the point where I can't do anything anymore. This is especially true with regards to my mind; if I reach the point where I'm not even really aware of myself or my surroundings anymore and all I'm doing is merely existing, then it's well past time to Check Out.
"The record holder is Jeanne Calment, of France, who lived until 122 years old. Since her death in 1997, no one has broken her record".
Wow, what are the odds of that?
There has to be a theory that states that, any human that lives long enough, will, at some point in there life, end up in prison. We shall call it "Living in the USA".
I did an extensive survey and found that no known human has ever travelled to another planet. I therefore conclude that humans cannot travel to other planets.
the bible is not a trusted reference source. It was written by people who weren't there...
and yet secular people never let that bother them with ANY other ancient book when they like what it says.
"... repeatedly re-written by people with poor translation skills (not to mention political agendas to achieve)....
and yet, every time an ancient copy is unearthed, there are no material differences. There is simply NO historical evidence for all the "telephone game" style degradation of content that is always implied with this common criticism. None. Zip. Zero. NO SCIENTIFIC/HISTORICAL EVIDENCE for this claim. It's also very funny that people love to assert the claim that (particularly for the Old Testament) there were "political agendas" at play. Have you ever READ the book??? Normally when a biased group with a political agenda write a book, they write it to put themselves in the most-positive light possible. The Old Testament, however, is a long repeating tale of: "God says 'do {fill in the blank}', the Jewish people say 'nah, we will do it our way', they screw up and get killed or sold into slavery or pick a tyrant leader and then suffer under him". It's a huge tome of "God creates man, tells him how to live a good life and gives him the free will to choose his path, then most people screw up anyway. When one tribal patriarch does well, God rewards him by favoring his descendants who become the people of Israel but are stiff-necked disobedient jerks even when God keeps digging them out and offering them advice for a better life". This is NOT the sort of book a self-serving people with a "political agenda" write about themselves - not even the "chosen by God" bit. Plenty of Jews have lamented that being supposedly "chosen by God" has lead to lots of suffering and persecution.
"Each new interpretation of "The word of God" heralded as an unchanging, perfect holy text."
Did you MEAN "interpretation" or "translation"? Given that there IS no 1-to-1 mapping between ancient Hebrew and any modern language, any translation to modern language will be slightly imperfect and therefore there will be minor differences between modern translations. The key is that people are free to (and encouraged to) compare modern translations and to go back and look at the original text. None of this implies any substantive change or error. If you really meant "interpretation" as you typed, then this is true of ALL words. Just look at how Democrats and Republicans and Independents all look at a Trump/Clinton debate. People putting their own "spin" on what was plainly said does not change what was actually said. If you reject the "spin" that some televangelist or cult leader puts on a Bible, just do the intellectually honest thing: READ THE BOOK YOURSELF instead of wallowing in ignorance.
That's the core diff between an atheist and an agnostic.
The one denounces the religious for belief in a God without any solid proof of Him, and then insists without proof that God does not exist. The other is honest and simply says he does not believe in a God for lack of evidence, and is also unable to provide the evidence for absence.
Proving a negative assertion is just as possible and just as much required as proving a positive, though it is often more difficult. Mindlessly repeating the dishonest mantra "you cannot prove a negative" does not excuse you from the obligation. Consider:
One can easily prove that a wheel of cheese is in a box if it is indeed there.,/p>
One can just as easily prove that a wheel of cheese is NOT in the box if it is indeed not there.
The fact that it's essentially impossible for a limited three-dimensional human with a short lifespan to prove the existence of an unlimited being who is unconstrained by the universe or the laws of physics does not mean that the being in question does not exist.
The fact that another limited three-dimensional human with a short lifespan is essentially unable to disprove the existence of an unlimited being who is unconstrained by the universe or the laws of physics does not mean he is excused from proving the non-existence if he wants to assert that non-existence as a fact. It's fine as an opinion, but if you want to assert it as a fact, you must back it up.
Oh, I know, somebody will quote the old drivel about "extraordinary claims require..." but that goes both ways. It's a rather extraordinary claim to assert that the entire universe itself, including even the basic laws of physics came into existence all on their own from nothing with no cause. You cannot even rationally claim to use physics and math to explain how physics and math came into existence. Nobody saw it. There is no proof of it other than the "it's all here, so it must have happened" argument which is equally available to the religious. The rest is all just speculation and day dreams pretending to be "theories" because the people constructing them over beer in the pub have degrees. It's like string theory: bull-session tripe with no actual science underneath it. It's no better grounded in science than creationism - in both cases people have their beliefs and then they imagine how what they believe could have led to what we now see. To the degree that there is mathematical "proof" it's as tied to the core claims as the "math" used by the worst young-Earth creationists who do math on numbers from the Bible and end up claiming the Earth is 6K years old (something the Bible never asserts); the math itself may work and produce results but there is nothing proving that the results have ANYTHING to do with the argument.
Get thee behind me, snark. Snark looks clever in the modern era of jerkiness, but it has no other value and certainly does not establish credibility or legitimacy for an argument.
You are behaving like the guy who built the noah's ark replica - you see something and you have your pre-concieved notion of the explanation and then you fill in the blanks based on your beliefs.
Evolution is an entirely unguided biological process. The most fit to reproduce and survive do, and the less-fit do not survive and/or reproduce less thus being out-bred. There is that additional huge effect of big fuzzy dice: which creatures encounter which other creatures and/or good/bad environments and such are essentially random, meaning that "superior" creatures will often be wiped-out or inferiors will survive based on things not in any way related to their DNA.
Any benefit you think is obtained by having a creature die after it has reproduced is entirely a figment of your imagination. You see death as a fact and you have worked backwards to conclude this must be a positive thing favored by evolution "because that's what we see" (the worst form of reasoning). Surely if a creature is superior to its peers, there might well be an evolutionary advantage to it reproducing many more times over a longer period perhaps even spreading its "advantages" to a wider array of mates and offspring to possibly achieve an even better mix of genetics in some additional reproductive pairings. The genes themselves have no intelligence, and no goals, and no plan and no desires. There would be no genetic plan or desire to have a creature die, and quite frankly death is not a character trait of the fittest surviving.
There is simply no scientific explanation for the REASON things must die, or for the reason they have a fixed lifespan. Lots of conjecture, and projection, but no PROOF.
Once that is cracked, the sky is the limit.
Telomeres. Once that is cracked, the sky is the limit.
"Odds of someone reaching 125 years in a given year are less than 1 in 10,000."
I'd say odds of me reaching 125 years anytime before year 2100 are a flat zero.
That French woman who lived to 122 likely had only 2 or 3 living cells left alive out of Billions
she started with at birth. Without the enzyme TELOMERASE to rebuild the telomere length,
the telomeres diminish until the cells can't replicate. ( However cod liver oil has telomerase
in it and will extend life 30 years.) Then used up cells die and become " senescent " You can
see whether people age normaly by the degree of change reflected in the replicated copies.
ie. You should be able to still recognize them 20 years later if they've lived with moderation.
Normaly people go through their lives thinking they're an hourglass with the sands
running out as life is finite without genetic intervention. Humans & other complex life forms
have a limiting gene, which is activated after a certain degree of senescence is reached.
The limiting gene tells the systems of any mammals body to start shutting down their functions.
So the specialized tissues comprising organs eventialy fail until a system wide shutdown is
activated, then a person dies. But there are life forms which do not possess a limiting gene.
Single celled organisms called yeasts can live indefinitely with air water and a food supply.
How long is indefinitely ? The San Francisco Sourbread Co. started taking yeast spores
out of the air in 1853. They take a bit of very old, very pungent smelling still living 1853 yeast out
of their stainless steel frig ever day to use that yeast starter to make their day's product to bake.
The Germans started their Rhineheitsgebot ( German bier purity code ) circa 1,000 years ago
by preserving wild yeasts having special flavoring characteristics. So the German beer you drink
at the Munich Octoberfest with hot babes like Regina Deutenger serving them up rack to rack, is
so old it's ancient. The Germans also use Krausening to ferment their champagnes. It's a process
of mixing very very old yeasts with new yeasts. The result is the explosion of new life you see
evidence of in the bubbles. I predict when enough research is done on stem cells to sucessfuly
extract the limiting gene, and geneticly modify sperm & egg fertilization so they produce humans
devoid of limiting genes, with a regimen of telomerase , you will see people live to 1,000 or more.
As XO & Science officer Spock said: LIve long & prosper.
Like the "stop" command in a computer program; DNA has telomeres to program when to stop growing. If DNA happens to truncate the telomeres totally; you get runaway cell growth that is commonly caused "cancer". The thing is, every time DNA copies itself, telomeres shorten creating a defacto limit on the number of copies that can be made. Cells of a given type quit making very good copies of themselves. We see this as aging in a biological entity. So, yeah, there is a finite limit on the life of the human biological entity and this has been documented since the 1970s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere
That's the 25 cent abstract. Now, for the good scifi question; would a perfect clone replicate the telomere status of the original or reset the telomeres allowing for longer viable life?
NRRPT/RCT
It's a FANTASTIC way to get quick-and-pssobly-right info on any subject, but also a way to miss a lot of the deeper arguments and contexts.
There are, indeed, several versions of "The Bible" (actually a bound collection of books and letters) but there are important points of note:
[a] Only several are widely accepted by scholars of the materials and languages involved and thus in widespread use.
[b] The differences are primarily very serious academic arguments along those typical of such academics: how much evidence is there for the authorship of a particular text? how much evidence that a particular text has been properly passed-down rather than being recently edited/changed? etc. Some of these academic and scholarly arguments have been going on for centuries and the widely-accepted "Bibles" of today are largely the result of these long-running and intense well--documented scrutinies.
[c] Most of the scriptures most people study are not affected by the presence or absence of the texts that are in some versions but not in others.
[d] The inclusion of an entry in the wiki page for the "Hebrew Bible" actually helps mislead the reader into thinking there are more versions than there really are: Anybody with even the smallest education knows that the big difference between the Jews and the Christians is that whole "New Testament" thing... Both faiths agree on the stuff that precedes the guy named Jesus from a place called Nazareth. That's not evidence of a problem with the "Old Testament", and unless you're Jewish, it's not a knock on the Christian Bible.