What’s the Longest Humans Can Live?
“It all tells a very compelling story that there’s some sort of limit,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has made a similar argument for over 25 years.
James W. Vaupel, the director of the Max-Planck Odense Center on the Biodemography of Aging, has long rejected the suggestion that humans are approaching a life span limit. He called the new study a travesty.
“It is disheartening how many times the same mistake can be made in science and published in respectable journals,” he said.
A child born in the United States in 1900 had an average life expectancy just short of 50 years. An American child born today can expect to live on average to age 79. Japan’s average life expectancy at birth has risen the most of any country so far, to 83 years.
But when Dr. Vijg and his students looked closely at the data on survival and mortality, they saw something different.
The scientists charted how many people of varying ages were alive in a given year. Then they compared the figures from year to year, in order to calculate how fast the population grew at each age.
The fastest-growing portion of society has been old people, Dr. Vijg found. In France in the 1920s, for example, the fastest-growing group of women was the 85-year-olds.
As average life expectancy lengthened, this peak shifted as well. By the 1990s, the fastest-growing group of Frenchwomen was the 102-year-olds. If that trend had continued, the fastest-growing group today might well be the 110-year-olds.
“It all tells a very compelling story that there’s some sort of limit,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has made a similar argument for over 25 years.
James W. Vaupel, the director of the Max-Planck Odense Center on the Biodemography of Aging, has long rejected the suggestion that humans are approaching a life span limit. He called the new study a travesty.
“It is disheartening how many times the same mistake can be made in science and published in respectable journals,” he said.
A child born in the United States in 1900 had an average life expectancy just short of 50 years. An American child born today can expect to live on average to age 79. Japan’s average life expectancy at birth has risen the most of any country so far, to 83 years.
But when Dr. Vijg and his students looked closely at the data on survival and mortality, they saw something different.
The scientists charted how many people of varying ages were alive in a given year. Then they compared the figures from year to year, in order to calculate how fast the population grew at each age.
The fastest-growing portion of society has been old people, Dr. Vijg found. In France in the 1920s, for example, the fastest-growing group of women was the 85-year-olds.
As average life expectancy lengthened, this peak shifted as well. By the 1990s, the fastest-growing group of Frenchwomen was the 102-year-olds. If that trend had continued, the fastest-growing group today might well be the 110-year-olds.
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