Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Say Human Lifespans Have Already Hit Their Peak (newsweek.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Newsweek:
We have reached our peak in terms of lifespan, athletic performance and height, according to a new survey of research and historical records... "These traits no longer increase, despite further continuous nutritional, medical, and scientific progress," said Jean-FranÃois Toussaint, a physiologist at Paris Descartes University, France, in a press release... For the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Physiology, a team of French scientists, including Toussaint, from a range of fields analyzed 120 years' worth of historical records and previous research to gauge the varying pace of changes seen in human athletic performance, human lifespan and human height. While, as they observe, the 20th century saw a surge in improvements in all three areas that mirrored industrial, medical and scientific advances, the pace of those advances has slowed significantly in recent years.
The team looked at world records in a variety of sports, including running, swimming, skating, cycling and weight-lifting. Olympic athletes in those sports continually toppled records by impressive margins from the early 1900s to the end of the 20th century, according the study. But since then, Olympic records have shown just incremental improvements. We have stopped not only getting faster and stronger, according to the study, but also growing taller... [D]ata from the last three decades suggest that heights have plateaued among high-income countries in North America and Europe... As for our human lifespan, life expectancy in high-income countries rose by about 30 years from 1900 to 2000, according to a National Institutes of Health study cited by the authors, thanks to better nutrition, hygiene, vaccines and other medical improvements. But we may have maxed out our biological limit for longevity. The researchers found that in many human populations, says Toussaint, "it's more and more difficult to show progress in lifespan despite the advances of science."
The team looked at world records in a variety of sports, including running, swimming, skating, cycling and weight-lifting. Olympic athletes in those sports continually toppled records by impressive margins from the early 1900s to the end of the 20th century, according the study. But since then, Olympic records have shown just incremental improvements. We have stopped not only getting faster and stronger, according to the study, but also growing taller... [D]ata from the last three decades suggest that heights have plateaued among high-income countries in North America and Europe... As for our human lifespan, life expectancy in high-income countries rose by about 30 years from 1900 to 2000, according to a National Institutes of Health study cited by the authors, thanks to better nutrition, hygiene, vaccines and other medical improvements. But we may have maxed out our biological limit for longevity. The researchers found that in many human populations, says Toussaint, "it's more and more difficult to show progress in lifespan despite the advances of science."
"These traits no longer increase, despite further continuous nutritional, medical, and scientific progress ..."
Perhaps not as much progress has been made as our scientists say then?
A new kidney would have saved him. We need a plan to grow new organs, even if it's in pigs or in brainless human bodies. Of course the Christian fundamentalists will never let this happen. Fucking hypocrites.
No Rush, thatâ(TM)s the devil waiting for you!
How To Go To Heaven
According to the holy Word of God in the King James Bible!
Powered by Google TranslateTranslate
It is very simple to be saved and takes only a minute to explain. Please let me show you how to get to Heaven from the Bible, God's Word...
Man is a Sinner in the Eyes of a Holy God.
Isaiah 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Romans 3:19, “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.”
John 3:3, “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Romans 3:10, “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.”
Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
There is a Price For Our SinBurning in Hell Forever.
Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Romans 5:12, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”
2nd Thessalonians 1:8, “In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Revelation 20:15, "And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”
Revelation 21:8, “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
Jesus paid that price by dying on the cross and shedding His blood; Christ was buried and bodily rose again the third day!
Romans 5:8, “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
1st Timothy 1:15, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”
1st Peter 1:18-19, “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things,
Time for Eugenics...
I already worked this out a few years ago. Just graph some of the changes in world records in various Olympic sports. It's clear we are approaching asymptotes in these sports. Barring some radical changes, the world records are not going to change significantly. This mostly applies to the traditional sports that are "human powered": running, swimming, javelin. Better shoes aren't likely to make much of a difference anymore. A better sled could improve times. If you are looking to break world records, you are going to need to look to mechanical improvements in the equipment.
Here is one old person who has not peaked.
When we reach the limits of our genes, we'll modify our genes.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The patent office will soon be closed due to lack of new inventions
The French are surrendering something again!
We haven't even gotten to DNA meddling on Humans yet, let alone implanted devices to enhance the function of existing organs.
Drug use shows we can exceed our current limits. Medical devices can keep a body alive long past the time its given up. Maybe we can't turn the clock back and live hundreds of years right now, but we've barely scratched the surface of how can fix that.
When you die, the atoms that compose your body will return to the universe. You will simply cease to be.
"Human Lifespans Have Already Hit Their Peak Based on Current Methodologies and Technology" should be the title. My thought is that new methodologies and technologies, such as being able to keep cellular information from deteriorating as people age due to replication degradation, should increase lifespan. My understanding is that almost all body cells are replaced every seven years, but each total replacement is less accurate than the previous one. After a few replication cycles, information deteriorates, similar to a photocopy of a photocopy.
We've gotten *very* good at dealing with sick people. But we haven't really made any big progress on making healthy people healthier by slowing the effect of aging. Being in "good health" means entirely different things for a 20yo and an 80yo. I think it's because it's very ethically challenging to experiment on healthy people, like if you got cancer obviously we'll treat that. But if you're "only" getting older, do we really dare mess that up? I'd say the answer is overwhelmingly no, unless there's nothing wrong with you we'll do nothing. Okay eat healthy, exercise but nothing to truly stall the decline.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
For centuries humans had a limited diet and essentially non-existent medicine and medical care.
Once the ability for a varied diet took place and advances in medicine kicked in, there was a sudden growth of humans in both size and virility. We can see these changes in the size of skeletons. Afflictions which would have in the past killed us in droves are now, for all intents and purposes, gone.*
With those limitations removed, evolution was free to do the voodoo that it do. This doesn't even take into consideration the amount of time people now have to pursue sporting events using modern training methods. Despite this, it's quite obvious we've essentially reached our peak size. There may be incremental increases over the coming centuries, but nothing near the pace which happened over the preceding centuries.
* We're leaving the anti-vaccine idiots
Lets just keep funding education so that below average students who might pass a test will pass a test?
More funding and test results will improve next decade?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Here is the chart of peak athletic performance. I didn't realize it had plateaued so much since 1980.
Chart of oldest person, compared with oldest living olympian since olympians tend to live longer.
The paper is basically an argument against Aubrey de Grey, who claims that in the near future, we will figure out specific technologies (and de Grey lists them) that will allow us to live 200 or even 500 years. Unfortunately the argument is weak (as I understand it), because it relies on analysis of aggregate technology improvements (technologies including things like washing hands and antibiotics).
The obvious counter-argument would be, "Of course, sometimes progress goes fast, sometimes slow; sometimes in spurts, sometimes it stalls. Regardless of whether it comes fast or slow, when we figure out the solutions to these problems, we will live a really long time." In that sense, the paper knocks down something of a strawman (by not addressing their opponent's strongest argument).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"These traits no longer increase, despite further continuous nutritional, medical, and scientific progress,"
They are correct, progress in nutrition isn't increasing our lifespans but the fail to mention it's bad progress resulting in worse nutrition than before. Heart disease the the leading killer of people and we know the cause is entirely dietary for the vast majority of cases.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
And simultaneously, my spirit will be in the arms of Jesus.
Which is why one 100-year-old will credit having a cigar and a bourbon every day and another will credit never having smoked or drunk alcohol. And "medical science" can't explain either one of them.
Stress severely limits life expectancy and while nutrition, medicine etc might improve, stress seems to be increasing as well at the same time, possibly removing part of the benefit of the other factors. Also, it is possible that there will be some sudden disruptive discovery in medicine that will have a significant effect to life expectancy.
As for athletic performance & height, well, I guess we can't expect much improvement there without drugs, genetic manipulation etc - you don't exactly get taller by eating better, you just don't grow to your full potential when malnourished...
Not that exciting research IMHO...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I wonder how the misguided diet advice of low fat/low dietary cholesterol/high carbs in the late 1960s onward is reflected in this study.
I would guess that the general improvement of human metrics extended slightly past the dawn of that dietary advice (ie, the 1990s) and the drop in statistically broad improvement may not be a hard limit but a byproduct of bad nutrition advice which has turned into the obesity epidemic.
I'm also not sure that growing any taller is really of that much utility, either. It may be in a world defined physical combat, but its general utility is kind of limited because it implies greater nutritional demand. Maybe some distant future interstellar anthropologists will say something like:
"It's apparent from their overly large skeletons that these were a people who would not have been capable of organized long distance space flight. Their nutritional demands and excess mass would have consumed too much energy and literally crushed them to death when accelerating to hyperspace. We now understand that only species whose height doesn't exceed 12 Nzsrs and mass doesn't exceed 35 Pmbrs will ever become interstellar."
In my country that's hate speech.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
...since natural selection is actually the mechanism for evolution, yet society has totally undermined it with its ongoing mission to remove even the slightest possible risk to humans. It also mandates that even the most unsuitable people banging out kids as fast as they can is supposed to be celebrated by all.
1) It is not true that human life spans, height, and athleticism naturally improve. They assumed this by looking at an unusual period of time, the last century. There was NO natural, gradual improvement.
2) What is true is that in the past hundred years we made three different discoveries, each of which INSTANTLY raised lie expectancy, height, and athleticism to their current values. But it took a long time for that knowledge to spread. There are still people out there smoking cigarettes, drinking to excess, etc. Those three issues were healthy lifestyles (life span), nutrition (height), exercise (athleticism).
3) There are several discoveries that are not advances in healthy lifestyle, nutrition, or exercise that are very promising new ways to improve all three of those statistics. Genetic engineering and cyber-replacements could each individually increase any or all of those three things.
Technically, we can already increase anyone's height that has lost both legs. (https://www.quora.com/When-someone-is-getting-two-artificial-legs-can-they-pick-their-new-height)
The basic question they asked shows their assumptions are silly.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I think it may be safer to say that human lifespans and performance have hit their peak for this set of environmental conditions. These genetics are likely to behave rather differently, say, on another planet (or whatever).
Fuck off chimp, use your own internet.
Doesn't this story come out every 15-20 years or so?
It basically says the same thing, that humans will never get better/taller/faster/more attractive than today. Then they say the same thing in 15-20 years, except that everything got better/faster/taller/more attractive during that time.
Training and equipment allowed significant performance improvements in a relatively short period of time. How high could one of today's pole vaulters reach using a pole from the 1950's? Or put one of today's cyclists on a bike from that era and see whether they break any Tour de France records. Technique and nutrition have also been refined to the point where there will probably be very few more major improvements.
These factors allowed elite athletes (now sorted into various sports by body type) to improve their performance very significantly without changing the basic human body all that much. The next step, though...actually modifying an individual's genetic structure...may produce some pretty spectacular results.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
There is still room for improvements. Just stopping the use of tobacco can add five years to the average human life span. In First World countries more exercise and less junk food can add another 5 years. Comprehensive Health Care can add another 5 years. Overall I think we could add twenty years to our average life span.
Gaaaaay.
Great work on the character set stuff, Slashdot. Not!
Eliminate sugar and other fiberless carbs from our diets, and the picture will improve.
Or just examine longevity of the fraction of the population that avoids sugar/fiberless carbs.
Through higher premiums, I'm sick of paying medical costs for the poor dietary behavior of the vast majority.
Your "spirit" is just a combination of chemicals. It ceases to be when you cease to be.
Natural selection has brought us this far, and this is where it stops. It's time for us to start exercising intelligent design. Fire up the CRISPRs!
There is a 1 in 3 chance that you will get cancer. A cancer-riddled society is a profitable society.
Your manufactured food supply is poisoned. We will never clean up our food chain because that would cost too much. An obese society is a profitable society.
Alcohol, tobacco, and other poisons will continue to be legal no matter the impact. An addicted society is a profitable society.
Death is no longer a natural event. Death is now manufactured.
Could we live a longer, healthier life? Yes. But you must find a cure for Greed first. Good fucking luck with that shit. Might as well order that snow-cone maker for Hell.
Fix the god damned nature murdering habitat of this hellish dirt bowl of a fuck fest... that concludes my hypothesis on improving longevity. So what do you think should we continue to stick our heads up the specimen's asshole or shall we look elsewhere for real problems to answer?
We can't forget that a lot of that 30 year average life expectancy increasing is because almost all kids survive childhood now. It's not like everyone used to keel over at 50, it was that a bunch of childhood diseases prevented a sizeable number of kids from getting past age 5.
I haven't hit my lifespan peak yet.
I mean, I hit my personal best a moment ago, but I just beat it.
And I did again too.
There, I did it again.
We have stopped (...) growing taller...
I fear that we haven’t stopped growing wider, though.
Proving him wrong yet again
Lifespans have plateaued as a result of generalised improvements in nutrition and medicine. We don't know how much improvement is possible when specifically targeting ageing because very little has been done.
I cease to be every night when I go to sleep. Sometimes I am reborn in a dream only to die again and get reborn in my body.
The spirit is a part of the universe that coincides with the motions of physics and need not be ascribed to whole atoms or a given set of chemicals. It arises from quantum motions on a submolecular level until you arrive at a copy of a universal state.
There are unexplored paths, such as research into human performance enhancement. These are blocked by the anti-doping organizations that plague athletic organizations. Some competitions should be open to deliberate enhancement.
Bruce Perens.
The last thing we need is for humans to live longer.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
LOL, sure it is. Whatever faerie tales you need to tell yourself to stop from wetting yourself.
Even small children can understand the difference between sleep and death. It's really sad when you see a grown person who still believes in faerie tales.
Actually, the atoms making up JesusAC's body are already in the universe - so there won't even the level of change you imply.
I will be in the arms of Jesus.
When I die, I will be shitting on the toilet, like Elvis.
Strange, even as I'm alive the atoms in my body are continuously being returned and taken from the universe.
Kind of interesting that something ageless like an atom can somehow magically have an age inside my body!
Translation: Go buy a nice banana at the supermarket. Peel it and cut it in two. Feed one half to an 8 year old, feed the other half to and 80 year old.
How did the banana know to make carbon atoms turn into 8 year old human cells in one case, but 80 year old human cells in the other?
Life is were all the breakthroughs and technologies will appear in the next few years, and it will make everything that happened before look like cave drawings.
I see no reason why some currently unknown discovery would make an arrogant premise like this any more than a belief system - we know everything now, no need to strive or explore. The Human species has been artificially limited simply as a process of the economic systems we have in place before discussing any of the many flow on effects from that.
Nutrition itself is a massive factor and considering whether athletes have reached peak human performance has little to do with maximum functional longevity for people who have different objectives. The lessons I have *personally* learned from a lifetime of fitness training and martial arts has left me with so many questions about unexplored areas of human potential that tell me that we still have so much to learn and that this article is just wrong.
One such lesson was how do I address the accumulated injury that I carry in my body? So roughly three years ago I started a process of extreme physical therapy to resolve accumulated scar tissue throughout my body. In that time I have resolved 28 physical injuries, I have had joints and bones in my body become jelly like and reform stronger and more flexible than they were before. At this very moment my right elbow is reforming and has maintained a constant temperature of 33C for the last two months as it gradually improves, an extremely painful process, however one that has obliterated scarred muscles and the painful knots associated with it.
This has destroyed many stressors in my life, I sleep better, my body functions better and I am more relaxed. I documented the process and collected data because I was trying to understand it however I had no idea of the profound impact this would have on my well being. Fingers, wrists, elbows shoulders, neck, ribcage, toes, ankles knees hips and even my spine have all been radically repaired and improved, many minor aliments I suffered just disappeared. I have less aches and pains now than I did 30 years ago and I don't groan when I get up or move.
So if I can can uncover that process myself I think that people dedicated to improving human health and performance can uncover a lot more in the years to come.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Just wait for the v1.1 update, it buffs humans and sharks and gets rid of the pesky mosquito spawn camping.
People many times predicted that Moore's Law couldn't continue much longer due to physical limitations, and yet somehow it did anyway. A new solution was found to get around each new physical limitation, allowing computers to continue to increase in speed for decades.
Modern medicine has simply reached a physical limitation. For the past couple hundred years, medicine has largely focused on fighting diseases and conditions that shortened people's lives. Antibiotics and vaccines have had dramatic effects on average human lifespans, but didn't really change what "old age" meant. But I'm confident that as scientists learn more about life at the molecular level, it will find ways to get past this "barrier" and surge ahead in its progress towards longer, healthier human lives.
Glasses, surgery, steroids, cosmetic surgery, etc.
Not all bad, but not what nature intended when she designed natural selection.
That's not magic. Magic is believing in an all-powerful creator and his son who was nailed to wood for some reason. Magic is believing that somehow people are special in the grand scheme and have everliving "spirits", "ghosts" or "souls".
There are still isolated individuals who push the limits- but the selective pressure is low.
Say if you couldn't run a 4 minute mile, you were sterilized.
Say if you didn't have red hair, you were sterilized.
Say if your grandparents didn't have long lifespans, you were not allowed to have children.
Extreme selective pressure (over 99%) would get things moving again.
Sure- it's horrific. Just saying that we are only at an end to improvement under the current level of selective pressure (which is really low).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"As for our human lifespan, life expectancy in high-income countries rose by about 30 years from 1900 to 2000, according to a National Institutes of Health study cited by the authors, thanks to better nutrition, hygiene, vaccines and other medical improvements."
Unless you live in the US where healthcare is so expensive and so crappy that your life expectancy is less than other 1st world countries... BUT hey keep telling yourselves, we have the BEST healthcare in the world! We pay more for less... This is amazing, if you are an insurance, hospital or big pharma company.
We are well below our peak. There are still billions of people who donâ(TM)t get enough to eat. And have no access to decent healthcare.
Life is were all the breakthroughs and technologies will appear in the next few years, and it will make everything that happened before look like cave drawings.
You'll even be able to pay for it with all those Bitcoins you own!
No sig today...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We could start artificially ending the main problem of overpopulation. And all the consecuences that rule horrible politics and social attitudes..
Just by designing a new nano-human . Deminishing human scale to the half in every next generation.
As in the chess legend, we could retain all our knowledge and standard size tools and crops. And at the same time, by reducing our standard size to a future size of insects, we could trouble no more about overpopulation or lack of nutrition.
I imagine that one day, we could reach any galaxy using the same ships that today, but carrying all the world population and food that could last for centuries...
This is just nature's wisdom, but today we should be able to accomplish it with our technical knowledge...
Read Robert Heinlein's "Beyond this Horizon." from 1942. Or, at least read the Wikipedia article. Clever method of eugenic selection without direct gene manipulation. (Granted, I'm not sure the method would actually work). Or, "Methuselah's Children" - same period, same author - for a simpler, guaranteed method.
Simple fact is, modern medicine is allowing more, genetically less fit, individuals to survive and breed. Note the current research on Huntington's disease. We have to combat the deterioration somehow...
hey having an imaginary friend means u r never alone
I cease to be every night when I go to sleep.
Your consciousness alters when you fall asleep, but doesn't cease. I'd describe being put under for surgery as being closer to death than just sacking out, but even then your consciousness is suspended, not ceased.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
How did the banana know to make carbon atoms turn into 8 year old human cells in one case, but 80 year old human cells in the other?
In both cases, the banana will transform into brand new human cells. How do you create 80yo cells without waiting 80 years?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
"Big Men???" keep on turning
Carry on like boys of sin
Singing songs about the teen-girls
He rapes 'ole' 'bamy once again and He likes 'em young
Well I heard Mister Moore deny about her
Well I heard ole Roy put her down
Well, I hope Roy Moore will remember
A southern folk don't need him around anyhow
Sweet home Alabama
Where the guys have not a clue (apparently)
Sweet home Alabama
Lord, it's startin' smell like poo
In Ole 'Bamy they love the POTUS, boo-hoo-hoo
Now we all did what we could do
Now Pussy-Gate does not bother 'em
Does your conscience bother you, tell the truth
Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies WERE so blue
Sweet home Alabama
Lord, can not these people be true?
Now GOP has got Deniers
And they've been known to twist the truth
Lord they make nearly vomit
They lie and cheat and steal, now how bout you?
Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies CAN BE AGAIN so blue
Sweet home Alabama
Lord, I promise to make it for YOU!
What if he said he would be in Paradise with Allah and 72 virgins?
I.e., you are removed from the simulation, and put into another, or an android body. Pass the plate! : )
We are currently being (1) poisoned with fluoridated water, (2) poisoned with mercury & aluminum in vaccines (that have gone up to 100 recommended shots by age 5), (3) poisoned with fluoridated Pig Pharma drugs, and most importantly (4) irradiated at ever increasing doses with microwave radiation.
No wonder our lifespans & size have "peaked". So has our population.
I have a lecture I give every now and then to various public audiences on tissue engineering (I'm faculty at the University of Calgary). On one of the first slides I show a picture of Dolly the sheep, and also some mice from Wakayama et al, Cell Stem Cell 12(3): 293-297 (2013) (TLDR: they cloned a mouse, then cloned that mouse, etc - 25 generations at time of publication, of which the first 16 had aged through their normal lifespans by that time with no detectable abnormalities).
Lots of interesting things come out of that work, but the key one for this discussion is that a single cell, from an animal that may be old, or sick, or injured, contains the information necessary to recreate the entire body of that organism when it was young, healthy and whole. There's the proof-of-concept - now we just have to figure out how to implement (which won't be trivial).
Seems to me that this "slowing" of improvements could only be just a plateau.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.