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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.”
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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!"
Elon's Mars colony - are people expected to live longer or shorter on the red planet?
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.
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.
Highest life expectancy we can ever have at 115 doesn't mean that there couldn't be a few who live longer.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I wonder how many people capable of living to 123 (or more) died to something like war or car crashes?
"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!
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.
Careful; that's a slippery slope, because someone else other than you is likely going to get to decide when you're not longer needed and should just 'return your energy to the Universe'. When you reach the point where someone else gets to decide whether you get to continue existing or not, then we've become a degenerate civilization. You'll end up with 20 year olds deciding that their 50 year old parents are just wasting resources and need to go away. Before too long after that you have no one left who knows how to do anything anymore.
I've always thought that was BS, and now you've provoked me to find a demonstration that you're wrong.
http://www.runnersworld.com/sweat-science/how-many-heart-beats-do-we-get
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Inadequate food quantity is a political problem.
It lets me live long enough that you'll go away and stop making the world a worse place.
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“Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?”
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I eat foods with lots of preservatives so I can live longer. I expect to live to 150.
Twinkies - the key to immortality.
Once that is cracked, the sky is the limit.
Telomeres. Once that is cracked, the sky is the limit.
Given the fact that there are several different versions of the bible in circulation, and the fact that the content of the christian versions have been decided by a bunch of comittees (who chose to include some part and omit others), you can already be suspicious of the content of this book.
Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Try it! Library of Babel
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