USA TODAY International Edition
Researchers clash over whether humans can live forever
One group says limit is about 115 years
Last year, a trio of New York researchers claimed humans had already lived as long as they possibly could.
About 115 years, Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers said, is the maximum human lifespan. Now a group of Canadian researchers challenges that assertion, saying it’s possible human existence may be boundless.
“It does not mean that we know there is no limit. But because we can detect no limit, it is possible that indeed there is no limit,” said McGill University biologist Siegfried Hekimi. “Average human lifespan keeps increasing dramatically, and maximum human lifespan seems to follow.”
Indeed, people are living longer than they were a century ago, but American lives leveled off in recent years. In 1900 , the average lifespan was about 47 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. By 1970, American life expectancy was about 71 years, increasing yearly until 2015, when it dipped to 78.8.
Jan Vijg, senior author of the Einstein study, said maximum human lifespan peaked sometime in the 1990s. Population and mortality data, he explained, showed people at least 100 years old didn’t live longer based on when they were born. Of those who lived to at least 110, their ages increased from the 1970s but plateaued in the mid- 1990s.
Using that data, the group calculated 115 years as the maxi- mum human lifespan.
People have outlived 115, but not by much. The verified oldest person ever, 122- year- old Jeanne Calment of France, died in 1997. The former world’s oldest person, Italian Emma Morano, died this year at 117. The title of world’s oldest person now belongs to 117year- old Violet Mosses Brown of Jamaica.
Vijg said that just because people are living longer doesn’t mean the oldest among us are living any longer: “Further progress against ... diseases may continue boosting average life expectancy, but not maximum lifespan.”