New research suggests that humanity has [reached an upper limit of longevity](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-024-00702-3). Despite ongoing medical advances designed to extend life, the findings indicate that people in the most long-lived countries have experienced a deceleration in the rate of improvement of average life expectancy over the past three decades.
This is because aging—a series of poorly understood biological processes whose effects include frailty, dementia, heart disease and sensory impairments—has so far eluded efforts to slow it down, says S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago and lead author of the new study, which was published in *Nature Aging*. “Our bodies don’t operate well when you push them beyond their warranty period.”
Isn’t this a bit like saying: a leaking ship will inevitably sink?
If our bodies continues to breakdown as we age and we haven’t tried to fix the core issues at play, I feel that it’s less that we’ve reach the “upper limit” and more that our currently available medical interventions have reach their upper limits.
If we fix a broken heart, it doesn’t mean we have fixed the broken veins, brain, nerves and so on.
EagleAncestry on
Deceleration doesn’t mean the limit. We will hit a huge breakthrough when we start doing what people like David Sinclair have shown to radically reduce aging in mice. From what I understand there’s not much doubt it will extend lifespans by a lot in humans, I guess it just needs to be tested as safe, and so far there’s no known side effects so I am betting it will be
jimmyjrsickmoves on
r/futurology isn’t going to like or accept this information
Saggy_G on
Sounds like we’re approaching the limit asymptotically, which would mean we haven’t reached it. Silly content spam bot. L2math
Spoonfeed_Me on
As other’s here have mentioned, this suggests the upper limits of healthspan, not lifespan. Longevity is usually thought of first and foremost as lifespan, with the assumption that longer healthspan would inevitably extend lifespan. If I live to 100 and then die, my lifespan is over, but I am perfectly healthy at 100, then suffer some sort of physical and mental decline over time, until I die at 120, then that’s different. Modern interventions have definitely extended lifespan far beyond healthspan.
DGF73 on
Methformin and love calories diet enter the chat
VVynn on
But then again, it may not have.
WafflerAnonymous4567 on
Good. Let’s concentrate on having a better quality of life instead.
Blastaar on
How did this get published in Science? Research into the underlying mechanisms of aging is only really getting started now, and there are exactly zero therapeutic interventions which are designed to target aging at the root. So of course this guy’s hypothesis from the ’90s is born out by the data over the last 25 years. To say that none of the interventions that people are working on that have never been tested in a clinical setting are all going to be useless and are not going to successfully extend our lifespan is total freaking nonsense.
CMMiller89 on
Ok so we are just letting companies share their own articles here now?
Weak_Night_8937 on
BS.
Evolution has not had time to touch modern humans – say since the invention of electricity.
Wait a couple million years and let’s see if humans will get to live 500 years or not.
And that’s just from natural processes… imagine what difference far advanced bio-/ and nanotechnology might be able to achieve on those timescales.
AshIsGroovy on
I’m waiting for the day when you just go down to the body shop and buy the new model.
1052098 on
Good. I’m not staying here a second longer than I have to.
Omegamoomoo on
“Humans will never _ever_ make a flying machine. The physics make it impossible.”
_- Humans, early 1900s_
OGLikeablefellow on
Thank God the hell that immortal rich people could put us through would be absolute hell
kalboozkalbooz on
but we are the descendants of the men of numenor 🙁
Heyyoguy123 on
Would replacing organs as they age help with longevity?
funkiestj on
From the article
>The new paper’s approach and conclusion “make perfect sense,” says Jan Vijg, a biologist and geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. “There is really no evidence that survival to 100 will become a reality **any time soon**.”
agree. Give humanity 500 more years without an apocalypse/dark-age and the prospects of serious life extension greatly improve IMO.
(No comment on how likely humanity is go to 500 years without causing an apocalypse)
nuck_forte_dame on
While we are on the topic can we all agree that Jeanne Calment was actually just her daughter assuming her identity to avoid taxes?
There’s a ton of evidence and most modern experts discount her as a fraud.
She herself didn’t even seek attention on it at first likely because she was hiding the fraud. The French authorities found her in the records and propped her up for much needed national pride after ww2 and other failures.
She failed interviews, experts say her skin and physical appears was way too young, there is very plausible motives, and to top it off when her daughter supposedly died she moved in with the husband and lived with him until he died.
RunGoldenRun717 on
There was an article posted on here like 2 weeks ago saying the average life expectancy will be 100 within the next decade or something….
21 Comments
New research suggests that humanity has [reached an upper limit of longevity](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-024-00702-3). Despite ongoing medical advances designed to extend life, the findings indicate that people in the most long-lived countries have experienced a deceleration in the rate of improvement of average life expectancy over the past three decades.
This is because aging—a series of poorly understood biological processes whose effects include frailty, dementia, heart disease and sensory impairments—has so far eluded efforts to slow it down, says S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago and lead author of the new study, which was published in *Nature Aging*. “Our bodies don’t operate well when you push them beyond their warranty period.”
Study link: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-024-00702-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-024-00702-3)
Isn’t this a bit like saying: a leaking ship will inevitably sink?
If our bodies continues to breakdown as we age and we haven’t tried to fix the core issues at play, I feel that it’s less that we’ve reach the “upper limit” and more that our currently available medical interventions have reach their upper limits.
If we fix a broken heart, it doesn’t mean we have fixed the broken veins, brain, nerves and so on.
Deceleration doesn’t mean the limit. We will hit a huge breakthrough when we start doing what people like David Sinclair have shown to radically reduce aging in mice. From what I understand there’s not much doubt it will extend lifespans by a lot in humans, I guess it just needs to be tested as safe, and so far there’s no known side effects so I am betting it will be
r/futurology isn’t going to like or accept this information
Sounds like we’re approaching the limit asymptotically, which would mean we haven’t reached it. Silly content spam bot. L2math
As other’s here have mentioned, this suggests the upper limits of healthspan, not lifespan. Longevity is usually thought of first and foremost as lifespan, with the assumption that longer healthspan would inevitably extend lifespan. If I live to 100 and then die, my lifespan is over, but I am perfectly healthy at 100, then suffer some sort of physical and mental decline over time, until I die at 120, then that’s different. Modern interventions have definitely extended lifespan far beyond healthspan.
Methformin and love calories diet enter the chat
But then again, it may not have.
Good. Let’s concentrate on having a better quality of life instead.
How did this get published in Science? Research into the underlying mechanisms of aging is only really getting started now, and there are exactly zero therapeutic interventions which are designed to target aging at the root. So of course this guy’s hypothesis from the ’90s is born out by the data over the last 25 years. To say that none of the interventions that people are working on that have never been tested in a clinical setting are all going to be useless and are not going to successfully extend our lifespan is total freaking nonsense.
Ok so we are just letting companies share their own articles here now?
BS.
Evolution has not had time to touch modern humans – say since the invention of electricity.
Wait a couple million years and let’s see if humans will get to live 500 years or not.
And that’s just from natural processes… imagine what difference far advanced bio-/ and nanotechnology might be able to achieve on those timescales.
I’m waiting for the day when you just go down to the body shop and buy the new model.
Good. I’m not staying here a second longer than I have to.
“Humans will never _ever_ make a flying machine. The physics make it impossible.”
_- Humans, early 1900s_
Thank God the hell that immortal rich people could put us through would be absolute hell
but we are the descendants of the men of numenor 🙁
Would replacing organs as they age help with longevity?
From the article
>The new paper’s approach and conclusion “make perfect sense,” says Jan Vijg, a biologist and geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. “There is really no evidence that survival to 100 will become a reality **any time soon**.”
agree. Give humanity 500 more years without an apocalypse/dark-age and the prospects of serious life extension greatly improve IMO.
(No comment on how likely humanity is go to 500 years without causing an apocalypse)
While we are on the topic can we all agree that Jeanne Calment was actually just her daughter assuming her identity to avoid taxes?
There’s a ton of evidence and most modern experts discount her as a fraud.
She herself didn’t even seek attention on it at first likely because she was hiding the fraud. The French authorities found her in the records and propped her up for much needed national pride after ww2 and other failures.
She failed interviews, experts say her skin and physical appears was way too young, there is very plausible motives, and to top it off when her daughter supposedly died she moved in with the husband and lived with him until he died.
There was an article posted on here like 2 weeks ago saying the average life expectancy will be 100 within the next decade or something….