Humans Probably Can't Live Longer Than 150 Years, New Research Finds (cnet.com) 109
Science is once again casting doubt on the notion that we could live to be nearly as old as the biblical Methuselah or Mel Brooks' 2,000-year-old man. From a report: New research research [PDF] from Singapore-base biotech company Gero looks at how well the human body bounces back from disease, accidents or just about anything else that puts stress on its systems. This basic resilience declines as people age, with an 80-year-old requiring three times as long to recover from stresses as a 40-year-old on average. This should make sense if you've ever known an elderly person who has taken a nasty fall. Recovery from such a spill can be lif- threatening for a particularly frail person, whereas a similar fall might put a person half as old out of commission for just a short time and teenagers might simply dust themselves off and keep going.
Extrapolate this decline further, and human body resilience is completely gone at some age between 120 and 150, according to new analysis performed by the researchers. In other words, at some point your body loses all ability to recover from pretty much any potential stressor. The researchers arrived at this conclusion by looking at health data for large groups from the US, the UK and Russia. They looked at blood cell counts as well as step counts recorded by wearables. As people experienced different stressors, fluctuations in blood cell and step counts showed that recovery time grew longer as individuals grew older. "Aging in humans exhibits universal features common to complex systems operating on the brink of disintegration," Peter Fedichev, co-founder and CEO of Gero, said in a statement.
Extrapolate this decline further, and human body resilience is completely gone at some age between 120 and 150, according to new analysis performed by the researchers. In other words, at some point your body loses all ability to recover from pretty much any potential stressor. The researchers arrived at this conclusion by looking at health data for large groups from the US, the UK and Russia. They looked at blood cell counts as well as step counts recorded by wearables. As people experienced different stressors, fluctuations in blood cell and step counts showed that recovery time grew longer as individuals grew older. "Aging in humans exhibits universal features common to complex systems operating on the brink of disintegration," Peter Fedichev, co-founder and CEO of Gero, said in a statement.
I can settle... (Score:1)
...for 150...for now.
Re:I can settle... (Score:5, Insightful)
Was there ever much question that if a human continues aging in the same way we currently do then obviously things only get worse the further out you go.
I thought true long term longevity research was more about "how can we slow the aging process?" And obviously that is something that is biologically possible in theory since we know of animals that already regularly live past 150 years. I believe there is one shark species that doesn't even reach sexual maturity until past 100 years and can live for up to 500.
Re:I can settle... (Score:4)
Was there ever much question that if a human continues aging in the same way we currently do then obviously things only get worse the further out you go.
Yes, this is tautologically true. If people continue to age the way we currently do, we will indeed continue to age the way we currently do.
The question is: "Can we age a different way, or can we not age?"
It may be possible to regenerate telomeres or to rejuvenate people with infusions of youthful cells. Peter Thiel has his "blood boys," but the evidence that the infusions work is questionable. Instead, using cloned cells from the target's own body and replacing/supplementing all somatic cells rather than just blood cells may have better results.
Of course, the ultimate key to immortality is transferring our consciousness to silicon and backing it up on DropBox.
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Yeah but there is no way to ever know if something was lost in the process and even if it wasn't.. how do you make sure you are the one who wakes up and not the one that experiences the death.
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Every time you go to sleep the "you" that is conscious dies and the one that wakes up just has your memories booted up from storage. The "entity" that is your conscious self literally ends when you "lose consciousness".
So there's that. Enjoy going to sleep tonight!
Re: I can settle... (Score:2)
You have no way of knowing if you are continuously conscious when awake, or it's on and off at an interval you don't notice. Maybe it's quantized. And esp. before a morning coffee, or after a drink or three, or in a meeting, it's totally not a binary thing. For all I know, the mere belief of continuity of consciousness is enough to put us at ease. If we see people going into and out of teleportation machines smiling, we'll step in the machine too out of herd instinct. The rate of scanning failure is presuma
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The real secret of anesthesia isn't the sedation which keeps you from screaming but the amnesia effect that keeps you from remembering you wanted to.
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Hell, if it really worked, I'd look into that vampire thing.
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No need to become a vampire. The "young blood" theory has been pretty comprehensively discredited by research at Berkeley. They found that any benefit from infusing young blood was undetectable compared to the benefit of just throwing out the old plasma and replacing it with temporary substitutes until it regenerates.
So basically if we're comparing quack therapies, leeching was closer to a treatment for senescense than vampirism, blood baths, or whatever else those medieval nobles got up to with their squ
Post-Menopausal Woman for a century w/ barren womb (Score:1, Funny)
But there simply are not enough cats, cat litter, nor cat food to amuse the average barren female human for an entire CENTURY of childlessness [say, age 40 to age 140].
This literally sounds like a recipe for Hell on Earth.
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It’s ok if you’re into guys. Nobody outside of the republican party cares.
Re: Post-Menopausal Woman for a century w/ barren (Score:2)
If you could reliably extend lifespans to 150 you might figure out how to manipulate all of this. Human cells aren't magic they "know" how old they are by signals or internal counters. Roll the counter back with the right control molecule or send a signal to her body that she's 20 and her cells will run that part of the program.
It's of course far more complex than this and real treatments might have to just carve off aged sections and surgically transplant in lab grown replacements. But the point is a wo
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My understanding (admittedly limited) of biology is that most of aging has to do with your bone marrow. As the cells in your marrow die off, you are less able to produce more red blood (and other blood) cells, which causes most age related issues. If we were able to use stem cells to regenerate the marrow cells, most of aging should go away. There of course are other issues that would become more limiting after that, such as brain issues, but putting off that reduction should cause a significant increase
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Nope. Not this one. That isn't some signal, it is hard coded at birth.
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How is hard coded at birth? XX vs XY? Because there are more combinations than that, plus actual development into male or female is determined by hormones at the right stage of development. The sex chromosomes are not irrelevant, per se, but they can be overridden. It happens all the time.
Also, the word you want is "sex" not "gender". The word "gender" just meant "type" until it started being used to refer to sociological circumstances surrounding biological sex sometime last century (60's or 70's I think).
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Because it is a birth statistic. The problem with the many gender and gender identity folks is that they are obsessed with things we ASSOCIATE with gender but those things are not gender. Drop the bigoted 'identity' mentality but by all means be yourself, the contradictions between that and your gender aren't real contr
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Because it is a birth statistic.
Because it's a birth statistic? That's pretty meaningless. Weight and length are birth statistics too. Are those constant throughout life? Care to elaborate at all?
The problem with the many gender and gender identity folks is that they are obsessed with things we ASSOCIATE with gender but those things are not gender. Drop the bigoted 'identity' mentality but by all means be yourself, the contradictions between that and your gender aren't real contradictions, they are societal baggage. Also if you have to mutilate your body and take hormones to be something it isn't who you really you are.
As I tried to explain, gender is literally all about things ASSOCIATED with gender. It's a sociological concept to start with.
We can be fairly certain nobody was born/evolved to need hormones.
Are you sure you know what hormones are? We can actually be 100% certain that everybody was born/evolved to need hormones because we know that they would not be alive at all without hormones. Once again, I think you might
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I already replied to your other post before seeing this one. Oh well, will just reply to them in turn rather than addressing both together.
One can't pull domain specific vernacular out of a sociology department and dump it out into the real world and say it is 'right.' In common usage the term gender refers to 'biological sex' just like it does on a birth record, drivers license, pronoun choice, legally protected class and sexual preference etc. It is not appropriate to claim that gender has meant cultural associations with sex in common usage for the past 50 years because for the most part those associations were and in some cases still are believed to stem from biological sex leaving little utility for disambiguation.
Most discussion on gender takes place in a sociological context. In academic discussion, understanding of the term is quite fixed. I understand the common usage argument, but it too often ends up being a race to the bottom. Academic discussion can use too much jargon, certainly. Especially in the social sciences, slightly different interpretations of the same terms can l
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Roll the counter back with the right control molecule or send a signal to her body that she's 20 and her cells will run that part of the program.
Based on everything I've read, the destruction of the telomeres over time may be the equivalent of deleting the relevant code.
So if you roll her cells back to a part of the program that returns a null/out-of-bounds DNA pointer (to stick with a code metaphor), what do you think will happen?
Re: Post-Menopausal Woman for a century w/ barren (Score:2)
Re: Post-Menopausal Woman for a century w/ barren (Score:2)
Then you have to patch the missing code back in. Not easy but possible and tools like CRISPR are able to make patches to living adult organisms. Delivering the patch to almost every cell is obviously a difficult task but it may be feasible with improved versions of the technology.
Re:Post-Menopausal Woman for a century w/ barren w (Score:5, Funny)
Jesus H Christ, it's torture enough being around women for the last 25 or 30 years of their lives when their wombs are barren.
I'm sure your mum looks forward to your visits too.
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Well the rate of decline of people who are over 100 years, is really massive.
Those who make it past 110 are in essence living corpses, where their bodies are nearly useless. Unless medical science finds a way to keep our youth longer just living longer isn't appealing to me.
It isn't that I want to die, However if I have to live in a state where I need to avoid all stressors it wouldn't be a life worth living.
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Yeah, but living longer invest medical science MORE time to find that way to keep our youth, or maybe give it back.
Personally, given the options, I'd hang around processing oxygen as long as I possible could.
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When I'm 100 I'll hope to still have the strength to post witty retorts online and I'll have plenty of free time to watch anime. What's the point of living a productive life if you can't reap that investment later in life? Retiring late, working until 70, and dying at 72 seems meaningless. But perhaps those people have jobs more meaningful than I can imagine.
Re:I can settle... (Score:5, Informative)
150 is very much a theoretical not a practical maximum.
For all purposes 114 is the generally accepted limit in terms of the fact if you manage to make it that far its *incredibly unlikely* you'll make it to 115. Theres a handful of people who have beaten 114 but with perhaps the exception of Kane Tanaka at 117 (Currently the oldest *verified* age.) the rest tended to be peasant or developing nation people with no real birth certificate to verify the age thus making it more or less a guess.
Re:I can settle... (Score:5, Informative)
Many clusters of longevity have simple explanations.
For instance, a big cluster of people lived past 110 in the mountain valleys of Armenia and Georgia.
There were many hypotheses proposed and tested, including the high altitude and daily consumption of yogurt.
The actual reason? Falsified baptismal records used to avoid conscription in the First World War.
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Just to be clear, falsified to make them look too young for conscription, or too old? Both seem to have some consistency problems.
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There's a well known "death wall" at 120. It's a googleable term.
That's what most researchers have been trying get past. Last I checked, no one knows why it's there, nor why it's at 120 years.
Re: I can settle... (Score:3)
Planned obsolescence to keep God's pet humans from overrunning the planet.
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Anybody could've seen that was going to fail as badly as it did. He obviously should've put more of a limit on the birth rate.
Our genes have little use for us once they've replicated, so there's not much selective pressure for longer lives.
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Why do Dogs (and horses) grow old early? (Score:2)
They are made of basically the same stuff that we are made of. Yet only live 1/4 as long. This strongly suggests that age is not predetermined, and it might well be possible to live much longer.
Sure, humans need to live longer to exist because it takes us 12 years or so to mature, whereas dogs and horses do it in about 1 year. But that does not explain why animals live less.
A dog or horse that lives to 50 years is likely to have many more offspring than one that dies at 20. So long life will be selected
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....A dog or horse that lives to 50 years is likely to have many more offspring than one that dies at 20. So long life will be selected for....
Dogs / wolves, horses, birds, hoofed animals lifespans are limited by predation, so I don't think natural selection ever favored longevity. Not enough animals made it to an old age to pass along those traits. OTOH, elephants, whales, large tortoises, and other animals that aren't threatened by predators tend to live very long life spans.
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What eats wolves in their natural environment? Or lions?
I agree that the value in living longer is weaker if you can breed after a year or so, but there is still value in it.
And humans rarely lived beyond 40, historically. Those that did could grow as old as we do now, of course.
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What eats wolves in their natural environment? Or lions?
Could be that being a predator is just as bad for longevity. They are getting out-competed by their younger fitter offspring. Not enough prey for everyone. What would be gained by having extra old ones around?
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And humans rarely lived beyond 40, historically.
Pretty sure you're downstream of bad numbers on this one, unless you mean pre-historically.
The figures used for historic ages are averages, which are dragged way down by incredibly high childhood mortality. After navigating that minefield, people from 1,000 years ago lived about as long as people in the modern era, maybe about ten years less on average, but even back as far as Ancient Greece, living to 75 wasn't astoundingly rare or anything.
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Maximum lifespans of each species do seem predetermined by their genetics. Metabolism and body size explain a lot (not all) of the differences in longevity between species. It also seems that by evolutionary chance some species found favor in having many offspring and short
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There's a well known "death wall" at 120. It's a googleable term.
Technically everything that's a term is a "googleable term", unfortunately in the case of that one it doesn't seem to return any results even remotely related to what you're saying.
Are there other words I should be using? I'm interested in reading more about what you're talking about.
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This
Research good, headline wrong (Score:3)
The obvious solution (ie, future opportunities for research) is to figure out how to improve human resilience (or do research to find out what factors are affecting it).
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It would seem like stem cell treatment is the most likely candidate based on my superficial understanding of the summary
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The question though is interesting. How long do you live, you were born, with one set of cells and when you get to fifty, every one of the cells is long gone dead, an ancient lineage and your poor sorry state as a elderly human derives from those original cells descendents not reproducing as they should have incurring genetic defects that further produce defective descendents as older cells die and are replaced.
The you that you were born has long since died, cell by cell, those cells consumed by you and rep
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I hear posting on Slashdot shortens a persons lifespan.
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Of course, the slashdot crowd tends to self-select for spending their free time sitting down, replying to comments on the interwebs. And that's not the healthiest behavior. You might not be in last place in the race to live forever, but I wouldn't expect you to win.
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Sure. In the sense that there is a raw probabilty someone is going to break a hip any given year and more years means more rolls of the dice. But it isn't a given that in a world where we are living to 150 we'll still have the equivalent of a 150 year old body. Theoretically the accumulated stresses and cellular damage are reversible or at least preventable in which case you'd essentially have a body comparable to a 23 yr old at 150, not the weak and brittle ol
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You are talking about the current situation. The headline suggests that the current situation can't change in the future, ie, that we can't figure out how to reverse or prevent aging.
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Might as well extrapolate growth of a human based on growth from a single egg cell to birth. If you grow from an ovum to a newborn that's about 3.8 billion times bigger, based on my back of the envelope calculations, then from birth to age 18 you should grow to about the mass of 3.2X10^202 Milky Way Galaxies.
That sounds about right.
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That sounds about right.
*plume of Dorito dust slowly manifesting from the burp I made five minutes ago through my Beowulf cluster of chins* Hear, hear.
That is the problem to solve, not the limit (Score:1)
Extrapolate this decline further, and human body resilience is completely gone at some age between 120 and 150,
I don't understand this line of thinking at all. That does not mean there is an overall limit to how long humans can live; it means that is probably the main thing we need more research on how to counteract.
Yes human resilience degrades as people age - but as we all have seen personally, there's a pretty vast difference between individuals as to the rate of that decline. You just need to figure o
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Extrapolate this decline further, and human body resilience is completely gone at some age between 120 and 150,
I don't understand this line of thinking at all. That does not mean there is an overall limit to how long humans can live; it means that is probably the main thing we need more research on how to counteract.
Perhaps it has to do with telomeres [wikipedia.org] which protect the ends of DNA strands, but apparently get shorter with each replication (aging). Some research [stanford.edu] (and elsewhere) on extending/restoring telomeres, in cultured cells, seems to indicate that this turns back the aging process to some extent...
Re:That is the problem to solve, not the limit (Score:5, Informative)
Theres a catch to that though. Part of the reason we die is because of the hayflick limit , a hard limit on cell reproductions designed to limit mutation and thus cancer, as unfortunately DNA copying is a lossy affair. Like copying cassette tapes to casette tapes, each generation acquires a degree of accumulating entropy, and that entropy is basically what cancer is, more or less. So far any thing we've found that could reliably bypass the hayflick limit, would also dramatically increase your chances of cancer and other nasty things that can emerge from mutation.
We don't just need to figure out how to restore telemeres (telemerase is likely the answer to that one), we actually need to figure out how to repair damaged DNA.
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We don't just need to figure out how to restore telemeres (telemerase is likely the answer to that one), we actually need to figure out how to repair damaged DNA.
We can do that, for the most part. We can take multiple samples of a subjects DNA and sequence them and compare them and figure out where all the errors are and figure out what the correct, original sequence should be, then produce pristine "original" DNA. Of course, we've learned that it's not just all about the GATTACAs but that there are other encoding features, but we're getting a handle on those as well. The problem is that we can't do that inside a human body to existing cells. What we probably can do
Re:That is the problem to solve, not the limit (Score:5, Informative)
I forget the name, but there's apparently some researcher (in California I think?) that has claimed his group has great success in drastically reversing aging in mice using a variation on the chemical cocktail used to revert normal cells to stem cells. To the point that his rejuvenated mice have health and endurance that actually exceed that of normal adults in their prime.
As I recall his claim is that it's the methalation (recording environmental adaptations) and tangling (from imperfect repacking after different segments get exposed for RNA production) of DNA over time that's responsible for most of the symptoms of aging. Supposedly by leaving out a key ingredient of a common "stem cell reversion cocktail" it's possible to get the cells to "clean up" and "straighten out" their DNA as though they were preparing for massive replication, without actually forgetting what they are and reverting to stem cells.
I think I found the claims outlandish enough to actually research the guy a bit, and he didn't appear to be a quack.
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Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To | David Sinclair | Talks at Google
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"This process, which we call recovery of information via epigenetic reprogramming or REVIVER"
Cute.
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This is actually a fairly common sci-fi/fantasy storyline. Schmuck who gets eternal life but not eternal youth ends up aging but not being able to die.
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It's not like nobody has tried to find solutions to this. Countless thousands of careers have been devoted to it over the centuries. It's pretty much the definitive holy grail of human endeavor, the most sought-after thing of all time, and the most elusive. So far, nobody has ever made any meaningful progress on it.
We've made a *lot* of progress on preventing people from dying young/early of other causes. The average
Should be 'without modern medicine' (Score:4, Interesting)
Medical advances can be expected to double those numbers. 150 years is probably beyond the oldest human lifespan currently, but we can probably already extend life to 200 if we get stupid about it.
I.E. modern life limits are caused mainly be telomeres. They prevent normal cells from reproducing more new young replacements. This is done to prevent cancer.
Obviously we are working to understand telomeres in order to both enhance the effect, preventing more cancers, and eliminate the effect, allowing old people to rejuvenate themselves.
If we learn how to add more telomeres, we will probably be able to scan you for small cancers, remove them, then increase telomeres, effectively re-juvenating your body to about the age of 40 or so. Then leave the telomeres alone again and hope you don't get cancer for another 40 years.
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Medical advances can be expected to double those numbers. 150 years is probably beyond the oldest human lifespan currently, but we can probably already extend life to 200 if we get stupid about it.
I.E. modern life limits are caused mainly be telomeres. They prevent normal cells from reproducing more new young replacements. This is done to prevent cancer.
Obviously we are working to understand telomeres in order to both enhance the effect, preventing more cancers, and eliminate the effect, allowing old people to rejuvenate themselves.
If we learn how to add more telomeres, we will probably be able to scan you for small cancers, remove them, then increase telomeres, effectively re-juvenating your body to about the age of 40 or so. Then leave the telomeres alone again and hope you don't get cancer for another 40 years.
And what about the rest of the body?
Imagine an software application designed to service 1,000 users suddenly tasked with serving 100,000.
Ok, first you need to get rid of the uint16_t for the UID, and change all the code that does UIDs. But of course that doesn't buy you 100k users since the database wasn't built to handle that many records, so that needs a redesign too.
Ok, the db is fixed, but now performance sucks because 100k is way more users and more chances for threading issues to arise. etc, etc.
Exten
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If we learn how to add more telomeres, we will probably be able to scan you for small cancers, remove them, then increase telomeres, effectively re-juvenating your body to about the age of 40 or so. Then leave the telomeres alone again and hope you don't get cancer for another 40 years.
If we can also develop effective cancer vaccines, we could perhaps avoid that telomere-extension issue. There are open questions about whether the architecture of our brains could function properly with a much-longer lifespan, though. Even if we aren't suffering from physical breakdowns, there could be information-related problems, and those might be harder to work around.
Still, extending our lifespans doesn't seem fundamentally impossible.
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The problem with aging is that it's not just a single factor. Our bodies are very complex systems that wear out in all kinds of interesting ways, with myriad "aging" processes that interact with each other. There's certainly a lot of value in aging research - reversing any of the mechanisms involved in aging will improve a person's quality of life - but it may never be possible to get rid of aging as a whole. Some of it is even things mechanically wearing out or slow accumulation of waste products, and you
How the World Defeats Aging (Score:2)
By Methusala's identical twin and bearded wonder, Dr. Aubrey de Grey
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/... [nextbigfuture.com]
O RLY? (Score:2)
Well what if one were to, theoretically, pump oneself full of transfused blood from healthy young teens, affecting those blood cell counts at least temporarily?
Re:O RLY? (Score:4, Funny)
We have those. They're called vampires. You may have run across them on Wall Street.
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Methuselah's Children by RAH. They solved the massive need for blood transfusions by growing blood as needed in a lab....
The (many years later, both internally and Real World) looked at the problems inherent in lifespans measured in centuries (lots of centuries)....
Human Brain in an Android (Score:2)
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I'll prove them wrong!! (Score:2)
Give me some time...
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I already have son...
False assumption. About managing tradeoffs (Score:2)
They are assuming that the slowing metabolism is not reversible. The probable reason metabolism slows is that it reduces the chance of cancer by having cells regenerate less often to reduce chance of replication errors.
If they cranked up the metabolism, then the body may behave younger, but get cancer more often. Thus, if the cancer side is solved, then metabolism can remain high. Some kind of DNA-cleaning "virus-bot" could perhaps be engineered to clean up DNA every few years. "Norton Anti-Mutation 3.0"?
And yet ... (Score:5, Interesting)
A newly-published study [aging-us.com] establishes that it's possible to reverse biological again by an average of 3 years via an 8-week regimen of diet, exercise, supplements, and stress-control practices (meditation, breathing, etc.) alone. The regimen they studied was designed to promote de-methylation of DNA (degree of mythelation of DNA is a reliable measure of biological, rather than chronological age).
It's merely a pilot study, so it will need to be replicated with a significantly-larger group of subjects to validate the results - but the fact that no medications were used (pro- and pre-biotic compounds were employed, however), makes it all the more interesting.
Start adding demethyation and telomerase-production capabilities to the human genome, and watch us blow past that century-and-a-half mark like a Bugatti Veyron past a soapbox derby racer ...
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See: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2021... [ucsf.edu] and https://unitybiotechnology.com... [unitybiotechnology.com]
Unfortunately we might start playing whack-a-mole with cancer though...
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Start adding demethyation and telomerase-production capabilities to the human genome, and watch us blow past that century-and-a-half mark
And perhaps watch cancers at the same time
more junk "science" (Score:2)
This is part of the nonsense that provides anti-science nutniks with ammunition. Extrapolating from current baselines is utterly meaningless. Why not use 1921, 1821, or 21 BCE as the baseline? Why pick those three countries? Why not Iceland, Canada, and Sweden (countries less effected by WWII and whatever epigenetic changes were brought on their parents by that experience)?
There are already studies that show some correlations (yeah, I know "correlation...") between diet, physical activity, pollution con
counter examples abound ... (Score:2)
But jokes apart, evolution can not filter deleterious mutations that improve reproductive success in the short term, in return for vulnerability to diseases much later in life. All those mutations abound in our genome. Cancers and geriatric diseases are what we know so far. The effect telomeres is just one of the few we know. So even getting bodies to live for 100 years is difficult.
Well, some can- (Score:1)
Rose-colored hope. (Score:2)
Humans Probably Can't Live Longer Than 150 Years, New Research Finds
Naturally one doesn't ask the question if we should. It's assumed that only good things will come from living longer while closing one's eyes to the evidence of what we're doing with the years we already have. Seems it would be better to fix that before we start asking for more of the same.
Financially dumb (Score:1)
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It's been much different taking care of disabled parents than children. That said, some people fall apart in their 60's and others are still independent in their 80's. Living longer should also include living better. Ultimately the goal is to improve the quality of life, not simply extend the more difficult parts of it.
If mind and body is NOT failing because of some new treatment, then it stands to reason those people will be able to delay the adult care to a later point in life. Because honestly, once you'
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My dad had a great 90 years of life. Unfortunately, he lived to be 94.
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Ouch. My grandfather was lucky only had a bad 2 months, the other 86 years went pretty well for him. Bypass surgery then later double knee replacements and he was back working in his wood shop for another 10-12 years. My mother other on the other hand has been a handful for about 9 years now. She's probably got more in her still, it all depends on if she gets sick or not. That's usually what finishes people off in my family, getting sick and being too weak to get over it.
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That's an advantage. (Score:1)
Death facilitates evolution by ensuring turnover. Death is useful to species, whose needs individual organisms evolved to SERVE and are expendable in that cause.
Elderly humans are a burden like it or not. We're wired to want life because evolution would not otherwise work very well if at all.
The trick is to live long without aging... (Score:2)
People will still die from genetic diseases or from doing stupid stuff. That's enough to placate Darwin.
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planet will never reach it's max carrying capacity. Human population will peak in a few decades and decline, prosperity and wealth lead to less reproduction.
I'm not sure I believe that. (Score:2)
It might just serve as a control mechanism, but I look at the Third World in the mid 20th century and fear it may not be enough. It seems to work only on yuppies.
Also, modern civilization is horribly complex with unknown SPF. One tripped circuit breaker can take down a massive regional power grid. It's happened a couple times, but
Most are dead by 82, few remain past 90. (Score:1)
It's like 87% dead by age 82 (average of both genders) and 1% for age 90.
Tellingly, most actuarial payments/pensions/social security break even at ages 81-83 if you take them early. You have to live past 82 to "win" by delaying taking your payment for a higher amount.
Healthy life vs Long life (Score:2)
More important is - How long can humans live a reasonably healthy life....
I've heard this somewhere before... (Score:1)
Genesis 6:3
acelerate to close to c (Score:2)
If you accelerate close to the speed of light, you could live a long time.
Of course it wouldn't feel that long...
Mel Brooks (Score:2)
+1 for the Mel Brooks reference.