Questioning the Validity of Jeanne Calment ' s Age

Jeanne Calment is well known as the longest-lived person, with her age at death validated at 122 years. The data for supercentenarians, the exceptionally rare individuals who live to be 110 years of age or older, is very ragged. This is usually the case at the far outside end of a distribution, where the total number of data points is very low. It is usual to find outliers, but some people feel that Jeanne Calment is too much of an outlier given the other validated ages of death for supercentenarians. Only one other person lived to be 119, and no-one else is known to have made it past 117. The yearly mortality rates for supercentenarians appear to be 50% or greater, though it is hard to be exact given the very sparse data. The odds of finding people just a few years older diminish precipitously given that level of risk. So what is more likely: that Jeanne Calment was the furthest outlier, or that the validation process was flawed, and she was in fact significantly younger? We would be very skeptical of anyone claiming to be 125. Should we be more skeptical of the existing claim of 122 years of age? This sort of discussion is an interesting one, as illustrated by the article here, but whether or not Jeanne Calment did die aged 122 will soon enough become of little importance to the world at large. With the advent of low cost rejuvenation therapies in the form of senolytic drugs, the environment of aging will change rapidly in the decade ahead. The use of these treatment...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs