Using Supercentenarian Data to Estimate Future Increases in Maximum Human Life Span

In today's research materials, scientists attempt to model future increases in maximum human longevity based on past data for supercentenarians, people aged 110 and older. This is an interesting exercise, but I think that all of the results have to be taken with a sizable grain of salt. Firstly, the data for extreme human outliers in longevity isn't great. A lot of it is of poor quality, and the portions that are well maintained do not include a sizable number of people. There are few survivors to such exceptional ages, which makes it hard to call any analysis of that data truly robust. This is a problem that afflicts all similar work on survival and longevity in the oldest individuals. Secondly, and more importantly, extrapolating past trends in human longevity will tell us next to nothing about what will happen in the years ahead. Past trends in human life expectancy in late life are near entirely incidental, as none of the widely available approaches to treating age-related disease actually target the underlying causes of aging in any meaningful way. That is changing. There is now a longevity industry working on numerous forms of therapy that will slow or reverse the cell and tissue damage that causes aging. The use of senolytics to clear senescent cells will become widespread in the years to come. The old people of the 2030s will have a greatly reduced chronic inflammation and disruption of tissue function in comparison to those of today or past decades. That sort ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs