Slashdot Mirror
Study Suggests There's No Limit On Longevity (smithsonianmag.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Smithsonian: The science of longevity is surprisingly controversial, mainly because there are so few people of extreme old age -- defined at 110 years or older -- around to study. So researchers look to statistics to try and figure out how long people can live. [Ben Guarino reports via The Washington Post] that in 1825, actuary Benjamin Gompertz put forth the idea that the odds of dying grow exponentially as we age. Further research bears that out. Between the age of 30 and 80, the odds of dying double every 8 years. What happens after that, however, is not completely figured out. According to a controversial study released in 2016, which analyzed data from 40 different countries, the average person could make it to 115 with the right genes and interventions, and a few genetic superstars would be able to make it to 125. But that was it, they argued. There was a wall of mortality that medicine and positive thinking simply cannot overcome.
But not everyone is convinced by that data. That's why for the new paper in the journal Science, researchers looked at the lifespans of 3,836 people in Italy who reached the age of 105 or older between 2009 and 2015, with their ages verified by birth certificates. What they found is that the Gompertz law goes a little haywire around the century mark. According to a press release, a 90 year old woman has a 15 percent chance of dying in the next year, and an estimated six years left to live. At age 95, the chance of dying per year jumps to 24 percent. At the age of 105, the chance of dying makes another leap to 50 percent. But then, surprisingly, it levels off, even past 110. In other words, at least statistically, each year some lucky person could flip the coin of life, and if it comes up heads every time, they could live beyond 115 or 125.
But not everyone is convinced by that data. That's why for the new paper in the journal Science, researchers looked at the lifespans of 3,836 people in Italy who reached the age of 105 or older between 2009 and 2015, with their ages verified by birth certificates. What they found is that the Gompertz law goes a little haywire around the century mark. According to a press release, a 90 year old woman has a 15 percent chance of dying in the next year, and an estimated six years left to live. At age 95, the chance of dying per year jumps to 24 percent. At the age of 105, the chance of dying makes another leap to 50 percent. But then, surprisingly, it levels off, even past 110. In other words, at least statistically, each year some lucky person could flip the coin of life, and if it comes up heads every time, they could live beyond 115 or 125.
Is that a consequence of biology or the result of a mathematical oddity arising as a result of so few people living that long and those who do being exceptional cases? The results seem somewhat counter-intuitive, so I'm inclined to think it's the latter case.
I'm more interested in seeing what the interventions that are currently available (and those that will become available over the next several decades) will do in the long run. Maybe they won't extend the total amount of time all that much, but if I can feel like I'm 40 when I'm 90, I won't complain too much if I still check out at 100.
Genesis 6:3
Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”
Ok, problem solved. Quick, some tell Elisabetta Barbi, Francesco Lagona, Marco Marsili, James W. Vaupel, and Kenneth W. Wachter! With all the free time they'll have now, maybe they can come up with a formula that explains why humans need sleep.
So a 50% chance of dying every year? Wow, that's just the comfort I needed on these long, cold, dark nights.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So far so good.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
Oh PLEASE let Donald, Vlad, Kim, and all the other assholes die well before the cure for aging is rolled out.
Can you Imagine having those monsters around for all eternity?
Jeanne Calment 122 years, 164 days -- beats your 115.
No, cancer is it's own thing - a cell-line that rebels against the body's constraints in favor of personal immortality. Healing in contrast requires cells to carefully integrate themselves into the existing lattice. And a core problem in that regard appears to be the formation of scar tissue, which "patches things up" quickly, but also prevents new cells from properly integrating.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Even the proton may decay and yet someone actually write a paper (or at least a headline) that suggest no limit on longevity? As our effective mortality rate is a perfect 100% which means there is absolutely zero factual evident to suggest otherwise. Also just from reading the summary, their findings seem to actually indicate the chance of dying does not worse after a certain age but that does not imply no limit on longevity.
I'd like to read something where Trump was not the topic and was not mentioned. Let it fucking go already.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The older I get the more fucked up things seem as I figure things out. The more fucked up things are the more I drink. Unless I can R&R my liver easily I can see my "best by" date.
Big thing today is the closing of the Toys-R-Us stores. Every talking head I heard said e-commerce killed them. Nobody mentioned how Mitt Romney, by way of Bain, did a leveraged buyout, sucked out all the cash, loaded it up with debt, then sold it to suckers.
I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was something like they had $500 million cash, $300 million debt. Bain bought them, stripped them of the assets, then sold them with something like $100 million cash and $5 billion in debt.
There is no way a company can survive that, Amazon/Walmart/Target had nothing to do with it.
We are meant to have an arc to our life.
There is no arc in an old folks home.
House M.D. nailed it
I come here for the love
Argument from article is closer to "While we have little sample of people living over x years, that doesn't mean everything have to die by x years.
The sample is not 7 billion and multiple verified people has hit over 115. On top of what other replies already suggested, there have also been multiple claims of people from developing countries - especially many claims from remote and highland rural areas (which fits the current narrative of low stress, plenty of exercise and simple diet being conducive of longevity) - of people over 120.
While most claims either remain unverifiable or since debunked because of the sketchy record keeping in the 19th Century (in many places birth cert didn't even exist then, Carmelo Flores Laura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... being an example), there is a reasonably high chance that a small handful of the longevity claims are real but undocumented.
Man I am really looking forward to living until 125, that just means I have to ahem save up TWICE than I make over the course of a 30 year career, to have a shot at supporting myself in my old age? Or become an unsustainable burden on an already bankrupt social security. Breed like rabbits in order to be supported by my kids like in a third world country? :)
WTF would you even DO with that much time, in your frail body full of pain. Have those scientists ever seen people grow old, suffer needlessly for decades and die?
I've buried nearly all my relatives, thank you very much, I would be very happy if people didn't live so long.
Talking about big numbers, the study in it's entirety is shallow thinking insanity. First question, are you alive or are your cells alive because suck it up folks, you are born, live and die, every single day of your life, part of you is dying and part of you is being reborn. To live in reality is to die continuously, it's just that the dying catches up and overtakes the being reborn. To go beyond cellular existence is to extend quantum conscious existence, where you cells share a quantum field state that defines the conscious you, keeps those billions of cells juggling a shared existence, as they are born, live and die.
Sometime things are never as clear as they seem. For example to control your emotions, it is always assumed that you limit them, why, from my understanding to control my emotions is to choose the ones I wish to feel and express and generally promote a sound physiological state to live pleasantly. A freeman is a slave to nothing and no on, not even their own emotions or life. Control your emotions, why wouldn't make yourself feel happy and content, why would you choose to feel nothing or let others control your emotions for you.
Do you already live forever, just a matter of relative time as a fraction of infinite space and time?
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Sounds interesting but try to flip a coin and get the same side 10 times in a row. Whoops. You're dead.
It's not like Vegas where you can put it all on black, double your money and walk away.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Statistics do not dictate how things work in the same way that the bernoulli equation doesn't dictate how gas flows... it just observes it and can predict it mathematically to some degree of accuracy. This kind of idiocy is like looking at moores law saying "it's exponential, chips improve to infinity" without attempting to look at the underlying mechanisms.
The sample is rather larger than 7 billion, since it includes not just the people alive now, but the people who lived in the 20th century who are no longer alive. Probably closer to 15 billion than to 7.
And someone may have lived past 115 that we just missed. Say, some Buddhist Monk born in the 19th century, no birth certificate, no record of his death....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"