I've heard a theory that the first person to reach 150 will also be the first person to live to 1000, because they'll be around for an extra 50 years of anti-aging research, which will buy them more time, and so on.
We do seem to have a hard cap of around 120 which
basically hasn't moved - we are just bringing the averages closer to it. I'm optimistic we'll go past it but not without some advances on a different level of everything so far.
> but we’ll need to do a bit of research to get us to 150, for instance
Indeed, but we could additionally to research also do something against the most common causes of (early) death - the more people live longer, the higher the chance is that one of those who has not suffered a preventable death is the one that lives to be 150 years.
And there's a lot that we can easily tackle at relatively low cost compared to the gains (both in productivity and years-lived): incentivize people to quit or reduce alcohol and tobacco consumption, make high quality food affordable and accessible to everyone (=combat "food deserts"), reduce working hours in a first step towards 40 hours and then 30 or even 20 hours, reduce commute times, mandate vaccinations for everything that Army soldiers get across the population, increase access to cancer awareness programs and to first-class physical and mental healthcare so that cancer and other illnesses can get detected and treated early enough...
Tortoises (and greenland sharks) are cold-blooded, living life in the slow lane, which makes things much easier. Hummingbirds OTOH, have an insane longevity metabolism pairing. My bet is that bats, parrots and naked mole rats probably have more to teach us about longevity than tortoises.
melling|4 years ago
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-anc...
Modern medicine should be able to get more people into their 90’s but we’ll need to do a bit of research to get us to 150, for instance.
anderspitman|4 years ago
It was from an anti aging TED talk I believe.
Tenoke|4 years ago
mschuster91|4 years ago
Indeed, but we could additionally to research also do something against the most common causes of (early) death - the more people live longer, the higher the chance is that one of those who has not suffered a preventable death is the one that lives to be 150 years.
And there's a lot that we can easily tackle at relatively low cost compared to the gains (both in productivity and years-lived): incentivize people to quit or reduce alcohol and tobacco consumption, make high quality food affordable and accessible to everyone (=combat "food deserts"), reduce working hours in a first step towards 40 hours and then 30 or even 20 hours, reduce commute times, mandate vaccinations for everything that Army soldiers get across the population, increase access to cancer awareness programs and to first-class physical and mental healthcare so that cancer and other illnesses can get detected and treated early enough...
moron4hire|4 years ago
Which makes this "feature" of COVID-19 very concerning: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8201243/
Vetch|4 years ago