Dead end: Have we hit the limit of the human lifespan?

Study says it is unlikely anyone will live for over 125 years from now on.

Scientists have long argued over whether there is a natural barrier to the human lifespan, or whether our life expectancy could keep rising, as it has continuously for more than a century.

As reported by History.com, a new study argues not only that there’s an upper limit to our lifespan, thanks to genetic factors, but that we have already reached it. From now on, they say, it is incredibly unlikely that any of us will live for more than 125 years, regardless of any increase in healthier habits or stunning advances in medical science.

While a child born back in 1900 had an average life expectancy of around 50 years, a little girl or boy born today can expect to live on average to the age of 80. In Japan, where average life expectancy at birth has risen higher than any country so far, that number is 83. Life expectancy has risen nearly continuously since the 19th century, leading some scientists to speculate that there may be no limit as to how long humans might be able to live.

But in a new study, published this week in the journal Nature, scientists at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine argue that despite the increases in life expectancy over the past century, it’s highly unlikely human lifespan will continue to rise any higher than what they are now. They believe there is a natural barrier to the human life span, and that we likely reached the peak of our life expectancy back in the late 1990s, around the time of the death of Jeanne Calment of France. At 122, Calment was the oldest person in the world when she died in a French nursing home on August 4, 1997, and she remains the oldest documented person to ever live.

Susannah Mushatt Jones, the last living American to have been born before 1900, held the title of world’s oldest person until her death last May in Brooklyn, New York. Mushatt Jones had been born in Alabama in July 1899, during the presidential administration of William McKinley. At the time of her death, the next-oldest American was only 113 years old.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 8^th, 2016.

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