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Medicine Science

Study Suggests There's No Limit On Longevity (smithsonianmag.com) 151

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.

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Study Suggests There's No Limit On Longevity

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  • Seems odd (Score:5, Interesting)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @11:37PM (#56869370)
    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.
    • Re: Seems odd (Score:4, Interesting)

      by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Saturday June 30, 2018 @02:02AM (#56869674) Homepage

      I wonder if it has something to do with relying on birth certificates. It could be that those around 100-110 years old who have a birth cirtificate are -for whatever reason - skewing the results.

      • I wonder if it has something to do with relying on birth certificates. It could be that those around 100-110 years old who have a birth certificate are -for whatever reason - skewing the results.

        I imagine everyone in that age range has (or had) a birth certificate. Finding and verifying them is the difficult thing. For example, my wife's father was born in 1916. When he died in 2005 (age 89, near Watertown, NY) we needed an official copy of his birth certificate. The original (paper) birth certificate was in the basement of a church in Waynesville, NC, which was the town where he was born. Who knows how difficult it might be to find reliable birth records for older people in Europe born before t

      • by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Saturday June 30, 2018 @03:36AM (#56869844) Journal

        skewing the results.

        Then, a "big data analyst" will conclude that issuing a birth certificate extends our life span.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      It just shows that you can nice-looking mathematical models that even seem to fit the available data, yet are completely wrong nonetheless. Amateurs at work.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      but if I can feel like I'm 40 when I'm 90,

      That's the real issue. There's more to life than just the number of years you are alive. Statistics and birth certificates are meaningless.

      It's not how many years you live, it's the quality of your life that matters.

      Right now, a typical person who is 100 years old, even if they are in relatively good health for their age, is extremely weak and frail. Barely able to walk, barely able to function. Do you really want to live like that for **ANOTHER** 100 years? That's not life, that's a prison sentence.

      Bu

    • "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"

      No genetics or the right food can save you from being run over by a bus.

      • Re:Seems odd (Score:5, Informative)

        by postbigbang ( 761081 ) on Saturday June 30, 2018 @11:24AM (#56870818)

        Or mowing a lawn in a white neighborhood while being black in the USA. Or being a journalist in a newsroom when someone has a grudge. Or simply being a kid in school when someone gets a hold of family weapons and slaughters you.

        Perhaps going to a wedding in Yemen. Being on a 747 that moves accidentally in to Russian airspace. Or dying in the Arizona desert to escape the brutality of puppet Central American regimes.

        Maybe it was black lung disease, asbestos, benzene. Decades of nicotine or alcohol addiction. Something's going to get you, and nihilistic surveys on Italians means only that they escaped these things and ate well and exercised.

    • The assumption was the chance of dying went exponential. But there may be a stability plateau out there nobody has reached yet. Well if not stable then stable-er than exponential anyway.

      Your cells stop dividing i.e. renewing, and slowly just die off of old age until there aren't enough cells alive in this or that organ to keep you alive.

      But if there are some core of cells that live much longer, or keep dividing, and you can survive the die-off of everything else...

      It's a great concept but is it true.l?

      • The assumption was the chance of dying went exponential. But there may be a stability plateau out there nobody has reached yet. Well if not stable then stable-er than exponential anyway.

        Your cells stop dividing i.e. renewing, and slowly just die off of old age until there aren't enough cells alive in this or that organ to keep you alive.

        But if there are some core of cells that live much longer, or keep dividing, and you can survive the die-off of everything else...

        It's a great concept but is it true.l?

        A 50/50 chance of dying each year isn't much of a plateau. Also, even if there is a plateau, your quality of life at 105+ isn't very great no matter who you are. You are typically pretty weak and decrepit. It might be useful from a scientific aspect if we can figure out why the remaining cells are more hardy and we can make the other cells behave similarly but unless we can halt aging before people start going down hill, it's almost a curse. It also would be a financial disaster to have a huge number of

    • Wasn't there a grand total of one person who survived beyond 115?

  • Elisabetta Barbi, Francesco Lagona, Marco Marsili, James W. Vaupel, Kenneth W. Wachter.

    These statisticians are 115 times more deluded than Pons and Fleischmann

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I would make that 2^115. I would also call them amateurs, calling them statisticians is an insult to statisticians, at least if the story is basically right.

  • ... we could live on statistics, and not need things like... stem cells.
  • by JayTech ( 935793 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @11:57PM (#56869420)
    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.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The book of Genesis is one of the first science books ever written. It correctly, albeit vaguely to account for the audience of its day, describes the creation of the Universe also known as the Big Bang in some circles.

      • A "science book" should contain research (or the results of research) that follows the scientific method: falsifiable hypotheses that are tested through experimentation and observation. The bible is just a bunch of facts given by some guy-in-the-sky. Even if those facts are correct, that doesn't make the book a scientific one.
    • by tenco ( 773732 )

      Well, that was before god killed every living thing in sight. Noah obviously got a new deal with his 900+ years. ;)

    • by Maeric ( 636941 )

      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.”

      This verse in the Bible is most likely referring to the coming flood and not how long they should live. There were a number of people after Noah's time that lived beyond 120 years old. Including Abraham that lived to 175 years. His wife Sarah was 127 years old as well. Adam lived to 930 years old. My understanding is that people started to have shorter life spans than 900 years because of genetic degradation. That is also why there was no law, back then, against marrying your brother or sister. After

  • Maybe we're just really crap at looking after ourselves and each other.

  • 50% chance (Score:5, Informative)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday June 30, 2018 @12:15AM (#56869470) Journal
    So a 50% chance of dying every year? Wow, that's just the comfort I needed on these long, cold, dark nights.
    • Let's look at what this statistic really implies. The chance of reaching 115 is already (with current medical science) extremely low. The very, very few who make it that far have a 50% chance of dying each year. On that basis, fewer than one in a thousand will live to the age of 125 (1 in 2**10). So, yes, it is conceivable, but so unlikely that it will likely never really happen.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        What is really going on here is that the model is obviously broken.

        • by Junta ( 36770 )

          Well, the model is likely incrooect, but people expecting an eternal increase in percentage... Well it can't go over 100%...

          They are saying a person who lives to 122 basically flipped a coin 17 times in a row and came up 'heads' (after they had done the already statistically unlikely task of making it to 105). If the probability did indeed level off, that doesn't mean there is realistic chance of making it very far if the probability is really high.

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Well, yes. And there is no possible test to find out whether the model holds past 120 or so (too few/no samples). For example, if there was a hard cut-off at 130 that does not have a large influence before 125, this would not even show up.

            But essentially it comes down to people not understanding exponential decrease and reading things into this study that are not there.

        • Yeah, but it's not broken in the way I want it to break.
  • by Major_Disorder ( 5019363 ) on Saturday June 30, 2018 @12:19AM (#56869482)
    So far so good.
  • Dictators... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mats Svensson ( 1745652 ) on Saturday June 30, 2018 @12:26AM (#56869510)

    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?

    • by aliquis ( 678370 )

      Stefan Löfven, Annie Lööf, m.fl..

    • Just once (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Saturday June 30, 2018 @02:24AM (#56869728)

      I'd like to read something where Trump was not the topic and was not mentioned. Let it fucking go already.

      • I'm convinced that will never happen.
      • I'd like to read something where Trump was not the topic and was not mentioned. Let it fucking go already.

        And yet you contributed to the mention of Trump by making your own, and giving attention to people mentioning Trump. I call shenanigans. You don't mind people mentioning Trump, because you get an opportunity to bitch about it.

    • 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?

      Not to mention Dick Cheney [wikipedia.org]. He's had 5 heart attacks, a coronary artery bypass, coronary artery stenting, coronary balloon angioplasty, had a cardioverter-defibrillator implanted, had an endo-vascular procedure to repair popliteal artery aneurysms, was outfitted with a left-ventricular assist device, and had a heart transplant.

      Cheney's been one heartbeat away from no heartbeat since 1978.

    • by Ecuador ( 740021 )

      Yeah, talk about a horror story, Kim Kardashian living forever!

    • The cynic in me tells me that if a cure for age was rolled out, it would be first and foremost used by those rich , and thus dictators included, before it hits the general public. And that would be the last generation of human : earth could not sustain eternal people.

    • This is a problem but not for Trump as he is term-limited at worst. It's the fuckers in Congress and the Senate who will need term limits. And the lifetimer judges, and not just on the Supreme Court.

      If people didn't die of old age or disease, the world would probably be split in half right now under the dictators of Alexander the Great and Ghengis Khan.

      • This is a problem but not for Trump as he is term-limited at worst.

        You're making assumptions, like that the rule of law will be observed. Stop it. That assumption is spectacularly unsafe, always has been, and is even moreso today.

        If people didn't die of old age or disease, the world would probably be split in half right now under the dictators of Alexander the Great and Ghengis Khan.

        History suggests that someone would surely have stuck a knife in 'em by now.

  • The submission suggests scientific controversy... but the philosophical controversy regarding whether this is actually something humans should strive for is probably a much bigger deal.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Some tissues are very "cell dense." Dermal, brain, muscle, liver, spleen. They are composed of mostly living cells. Other tissues, bone, cartilage, connective tissues, are "intercellular matrix dense." Put a sample of these tissues under a microscope and you will see a few cells with a lot of 'non-living' tissue in between. This is one of the reasons a cut on the skin will close up in days or weeks, while a broken femur may take months to heal. More cells replicate at a faster rate, and also regrow the inte

  • by AnthonywC ( 4415891 ) on Saturday June 30, 2018 @02:04AM (#56869678)
    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.
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      They basically abused mathematics until they had the completely contra-factual statement they wanted. This just shows that some people make very bad mathematical models.

  • by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Saturday June 30, 2018 @02:37AM (#56869756)
    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.
    • Thanks for mentioning that. I was well aware of it but I doubt most people are. Also not to worry, while the USA is extremely not okay with stem cell research, Asian countries are totally down with that. You're going to have genically matched replacement parts in the next 20 years no matter how many Catholics that upsets. I mean, provided you can pay.
      • You're an idiot, there is lots of stem cell research being done in the US, and very little of the more interesting stem cell research is still even being done with cells harvested from aborted embryos.

        When you read the news, you missed the modifier "embryonic" in front of the word "stem cells." Also, that news was only about government-funded research; and the government doesn't fund most of the research in the US! Furthermore, even with embryonic stem cells, it is only certain "lines" of cells they can't u

    • They said there is no hard limit, they didn't say there aren't ways to limit it through behavior.

      I don't really care if you want to drink yourself to death like an idiot, even after finding out that it makes things more fucked up, rather than less. But do your internet posts have to be so stupid?

      And by-the-way, the consortium that bought Toys-R-Us paid $6.6B for the stock. You seem a little confused on that point. They didn't sell it. The debt was debt that the consortium (now "Toys-R-Us") owed. They don't

    • by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      Most of us move on to the big boy's toy store. Like Tractor Supply where you an get a Red Rider BB gun. Then when you grow up even more move onto the big stuff. Farming farms with tractors or running big corporations. Get into golf, go to places where you can shoot real big guns. Even tanks.
      Kind of sucks after that. You get too old, get pushed out by young bucks, don't even want to do fireworks any more. Have to give up golf, then you die.
      So never get to that point. Keep playing golf.

  • by eggstasy ( 458692 ) on Saturday June 30, 2018 @04:02AM (#56869882) Journal

    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.

  • The oldest person to ever live was 122 years and 164 days. The 3rd oldest person to live recently died at age 117 years and 260 days. If half die each year, then less than 4% of the people who beat the current number 3 person would beat the current number 1 person. It could be quite a while before the all time record is broken again.

  • If you look at a conclusion that's medically ridiculous then rather than looking for a magic island of coin flips you should probably sanity check against other data. Here in Norway I looked it up and we have 66 people age 105 or older. Our currently oldest person is 108 years, 273 days at last update. If we were doing coin flips you'd expect 33 age 106, 16 age 107, 8 age 108, 4 age 109, 2 age 110, 1 age 111. The reality is we have 4 age 108, all the rest died at 105, 106 or 107 or in other words quite cons

  • by gweihir ( 88907 )

    "the research looks to statistics"... It seems these people do not know how to do statistics, like at all. They would just need to count the people 150 years old and older and they would immediately see a sample size of zero. That passes basically any sane test for the statement "there is a hard upper bound to ageing".

    OI don't know why otherwise sane and smart people lose it completely when it comes to aging. Yes, you will grow older and yes, you will die it it will probably be long before reaching 110 year

  • Quality of life.

    "alive" means what in this context? Heart still beating? Is the mind still there? Is the life active? Are you in pain? Will you look like a shriveled yoda?

    Full regeneration is what you're going to want... and for real immortality you're going to need neural backup and replication.

    Imagine living to 125 in increasing pain and decreasing mobility.

    Yay.

    Side effects include suicidal thoughts.

    • except the interviews with most of those of extreme age indicate an upbeat happy, accepting and relaxed state of mind. Maybe that's why they lived so long, the effects of stress and discontent and anger kill off the others.

      • Did you get that peer reviewed?

        https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/... [huffingtonpost.ca]

        Do you know what the suicide rate is amongst the old?

        No offense... I think you're 100% wrong and don't think there is really good evidence for that position.

        • The highest suicide rate is not found in the old, but of the middle aged. Caucasian males especially.

          You link to a nonsense article, that man is not 145 years old. Only one human has ever reach 120 years, and that woman then died at 122. All other humans have died at 119 or less years.

          And after reading many of the interviews of the world's oldest, I can tell you the majority are happy satisfied people; not bitter ones.

          You are wrong.

          • citing your left finger is not convincing me... there's a reason assisted suicide is something the old tend to go for not the young.

            But frankly this is a pointless argument. You are married to a concept absent any basis and I really don't see why I'd waste time trying to convince you... no one is paying me to me to help you here. Not motivated.

            • https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/... [cdc.gov]

              pointless because you ignore hard facts. pointless because you link nonsense article about absurd age of 145 years.

              I have hard facts and data on my side.

              You have willful ignorance

              • Proving my point, you didn't read your own statistics.

                Women in your chart have the highest suicide rate at around 65 and then taper off.

                However, men in your chart have an increasing rate of suicide as they get older.

                By all means, mod me down for letting the air out of your balloon. The lowest suicide rates are when people are young and the highest are when people are older. To suggest that there is a negative relationship between age and suicide contradicts the very pdf you cited and clearly didn't read or

                • I took a look. Yah, he pretty much stepped on his dick with those stats. Presumably he didn't reply because he understands his mistake.

                  Ha ha, we all know it doesn't work that way.

                  OT: you put a link in a reply to me a cupla months ago to "Mad World".
                  The thought that I might have gone through this life without witnessing that performance brings a tear to my ear.
                  I thank you, sir.

  • by CODiNE ( 27417 ) on Saturday June 30, 2018 @07:02AM (#56870204) Homepage

    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.

  • This is So Dumb (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tomxor ( 2379126 ) on Saturday June 30, 2018 @07:20AM (#56870234)
    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.
    • many other things about humans' bodies disagree too. Out of 108 billion humans who were ever born, exactly 1 reached 122 with all the advantages of modern civilization. I'm going to say it's impossible to live to 124, all evidence is on my side.

  • I'd say all evidence shows there is a hard limit on human life, and reaching 124 years is utterly impossible. Prove me wrong. You can't.

  • IIRC there was an earlier study of someone who had reached the age of 125 and they were down to one variation in immunological stem cell. This would seem to imply that if you want to live much past that, you acquire bubble-boy syndrome.

    OTOH, it's true that this was a study of just one individual of that age. And possibly it would be possible to build new immuno stem cells from rejuvenated skin cells. Etc. So they may be ways around it. But at first glance it looks as if there is an inherent lifespan li

    • You recall wrong, because nobody has ever been recorded to live past 122. Source [wikipedia.org]

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Getting the age wrong doesn't mean everything else was wrong. Perhaps it was only 115. She was someone quite elderly who died a few years ago in, I think it was, North Carolina. I probably got the specific type of immune cell wrong, too, and that's also irrelevant to the general point.

  • I am more interested in that. Does the article mentions Australian centigenarian traveling to Zurich to commit assisted suicide?

  • If humans lived long enough, they would all eventually develop cancer. This is because of inherent limits in the DNA repair mechanisms.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2010/1... [nytimes.com]

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