Only Limited Further Gains in Human Longevity are Likely from Improvement in Environmental Factors

Today's open access paper offers one of a number of different perspectives on the present consensus regarding the causes of individual variance in life expectancy, of differences in species life span, and of changes in human life expectancy over time. Human life expectancy has increased greatly in the modern era, but this is largely due to improved control over infectious disease and other environmental factors that can cause early mortality and long-term health risks. Similarly, individual variance in life span near entirely arises from lifestyle choice and environmental factors. There is a component arising from slowed aging, but this has been an incidental side-effect of improved technologies, medical and otherwise. The authors of the paper here suggest that life expectancy and mortality data shows that further improvements in the known environmental factors that impact health are unlikely to yield meaningful gains in human life expectancy. The lion's share of possible gains are already claimed, thanks to control of infectious disease and other outcomes of modern technologies. New approaches to age-related degeneration are needed, development programs and therapies that deliberately target the causative mechanisms of aging. Historical data says little about what human life expectancy will look like in the era of widespread use of senolytic treatments and other rejuvenation therapies now under development. The long lives of primates and the 'invariant rate of ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs