Can humans reach even older age?

This pattern “strongly suggests that longevity is continuing to increase over time and that a limit, if any, has not been reached,” wrote the team, which included demographer James W. Vaupel of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany.

“Our results contribute to a recently rekindled debate about the existence of a fixed maximum life span for humans,” they added. In any event, it raises “doubt that any limit is as yet in view.”

To University of Illinois epidemiologist S. Jay Olshansky, the evidence for the counter-argument – that there is a strict limit to the maximum human lifespan and we have reached it already is right there in the new Italian data.

“The conclusion that they’ve come to, which is that there is no upper limit to life, is unreasonable,” said Olshansky, who was not involved in the new research.

By the time people reach these extreme ages, at least half disappear every year. And since there are so few of them to begin with, this harsh reality “tells us the real story,” he said.

“If 100 people survive to age 110 out of billions – which is exactly what has happened – what difference does it make if it’s 50 or 60 that die before their next birthday?” he said. It’s just not persuasive to use such a small difference, drawn from such a tiny population of humans, to conclude anything about the longevity of humans in general. Statistically speaking, he said, “the tail of the survival distribution does not wag the dog.”

This should be abundantly clear to anyone who has ever been around senior citizens, he noted. “Human bodies are not intended for long-term use, and when we do manage to get them to operate past a century, plenty of agerelated diseases accumulate,” Olshansky said.

Geneticist Jan Vijg of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York believes he has seen the limit of the human lifespan, and said it ceased its upward trajectory in the 1990s with the death of Calment. (The Frenchwoman ascribed her longevity to the fact that she didn’t worry much and had a diet rich in olive oil, port wine and chocolate, which she consumed at a rate of more than 2 pounds a week.)

For a study published in 2016 in the journal Nature, Vijg and his colleagues calculated that if scientists could cobble together 10,000 people who had reached the age of 110 – a big if – only one of them would be expected to live beyond 125.

Vijg, who was not involved in the new study, praised the authors’ ability to generate a new and well-documented database of very long-lived individuals. But “their data does not substantiate the claim” that the maximum limit to human lifespan goes out much further than it has already, he said.

“There is a ceiling. At the end of the day there is a ceiling,” says Vijg.

Vijg says he is “amazed” at the vigor of the scientific debate around an issue that is so distant from the reality of ordinary mortals. The outer limit of the human lifespan is an “intriguing scientific debate,” he said. But improving the average lifespan of all humans – by extending gains in nutrition, creating new medicines and addressing the causes of infectious diseases – is a better way to spend one’s energy, he adds.

“There is lots of opportunity here, no doubt,” Vijg said. “We can improve quality of life more and maybe give more people more life.” A facial recognition system shows visitors’ faces and ages during the second AI Expo at Tokyo Big Sight in Tokyo.