4 ms·

In other words, John Citizen statistically won't live to age 130. Someone who is better off health wise and is less of a risk taker than the average American -

In other words, John Citizen statistically won't live to age 130. Someone who is better off health wise and is less of a risk taker than the average American - I bet given a lifetime of modern day medicine or better, you've got a great shot at 130.

pixl97 11y ago
The key is 'or better'. And no, even with the best modern (as in today) medicine you have no chance of 130. The convergence of accruing damage along with DNA that is not optimized for such long life puts a lot of pressure on the older body. It is very likely that the solution to the age 'problem' will occur at a much younger age with genetic manipulation to avoid or prolong the issues that occur at old age. The question then becomes, if you manipulate your DNA, are you human, or a human subspecies?
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  > The question then becomes, if you manipulate your DNA, are you human, or a human subspecies? That doesn't seem like a particularly interesting question. It wouldn't change the conclusion that humans can't naturally live past 120. And that conclusion itself becomes unimportant if we can reliably work around it.
- thomasfoster96 11y ago
  > even with the best modern (as in today) medicine you have no chance of 130. We don't know that. Nobody has lived an entire life with modern medicine. So many things such as organ transplants, vaccines, antibiotics, discouragement of smoking, awareness of carcinogens, etc, have been developed since many of the people aged 100 or above were born, or in many cases, were middle aged. > The question then becomes, if you manipulate your DNA, are you human, or a human subspecies? That's mostly irrelevant - there is plenty of longevity-related DNA variance within Homo sapiens as it is.
colin_mccabe 11y ago
I'm sorry, but that conclusion is not supported by the article (or by other data). No human being has a "great shot at 130" no matter how modern the medical care is. The longest documented human lifespan is 122 years. Living past 110 years puts you in a VERY exclusive list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_living_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_living_people Why this is true is one of the great medical mysteries of our times, which we haven't solved yet.
- thomasfoster96 11y ago
  It's true that the oldest verified person lived to 122 years - many of those years lived before antibiotics, before smoking was widely known to be unhealthy, before organ transplants, before widespread use of vaccines. The people on the lists of 'oldest living people' grew up in a significantly tougher world and thus many of their peers probably died young from entirely preventable or curable diseases. If those people had lived with today's medical technology and knowledge available to them for their whole lives, that list of people living to 110 would be much longer and undoubtedly you'd see an increase in the number of people giving to 120 and probably to 130.
  - colin_mccabe 11y ago
    If you read the article, they explictly rule out the "poisson sequence of life-ending events" model of mortality. If this model was true, a 120-year-old living in the age of vaccines, antibiotics, and organ transplants should have as much chance of living to 130 as a 20-year old has of living to 30. They don't.

pixl97 11y ago

The key is 'or better'. And no, even with the best modern (as in today) medicine you have no chance of 130. The convergence of accruing damage along with DNA that is not optimized for such long life puts a lot of pressure on the older body. It is very likely that the solution to the age 'problem' will occur at a much younger age with genetic manipulation to avoid or prolong the issues that occur at old age. The question then becomes, if you manipulate your DNA, are you human, or a human subspecies?

JoshTriplett 11y ago
> The question then becomes, if you manipulate your DNA, are you human, or a human subspecies? That doesn't seem like a particularly interesting question. It wouldn't change the conclusion that humans can't naturally live past 120. And that conclusion itself becomes unimportant if we can reliably work around it.
thomasfoster96 11y ago
> even with the best modern (as in today) medicine you have no chance of 130. We don't know that. Nobody has lived an entire life with modern medicine. So many things such as organ transplants, vaccines, antibiotics, discouragement of smoking, awareness of carcinogens, etc, have been developed since many of the people aged 100 or above were born, or in many cases, were middle aged. > The question then becomes, if you manipulate your DNA, are you human, or a human subspecies? That's mostly irrelevant - there is plenty of longevity-related DNA variance within Homo sapiens as it is.

colin_mccabe 11y ago

I'm sorry, but that conclusion is not supported by the article (or by other data). No human being has a "great shot at 130" no matter how modern the medical care is. The longest documented human lifespan is 122 years. Living past 110 years puts you in a VERY exclusive list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_living_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_living_people Why this is true is one of the great medical mysteries of our times, which we haven't solved yet.

thomasfoster96 11y ago
It's true that the oldest verified person lived to 122 years - many of those years lived before antibiotics, before smoking was widely known to be unhealthy, before organ transplants, before widespread use of vaccines. The people on the lists of 'oldest living people' grew up in a significantly tougher world and thus many of their peers probably died young from entirely preventable or curable diseases. If those people had lived with today's medical technology and knowledge available to them for their whole lives, that list of people living to 110 would be much longer and undoubtedly you'd see an increase in the number of people giving to 120 and probably to 130.
- colin_mccabe 11y ago
  If you read the article, they explictly rule out the "poisson sequence of life-ending events" model of mortality. If this model was true, a 120-year-old living in the age of vaccines, antibiotics, and organ transplants should have as much chance of living to 130 as a 20-year old has of living to 30. They don't.