Driven by technological progress, human life expectancy has increased greatly since the nineteenth century. Demographic evidence has revealed an ongoing reduction in old-age mortality and a rise of the maximum age at death, which may gradually extend human longevity. Together with observations that lifespan in various animal species is flexible and can be increased by genetic or pharmaceutical intervention, these results have led to suggestions that longevity may not be subject to strict, species-specific genetic constraints. Here, by analysing global demographic data, we show that improvements in survival with age tend to decline after age 100, and that the age at death of the world’s oldest person has not increased since the 1990s. Our results strongly suggest that the maximum lifespan of humans is fixed and subject to natural constraints.
[1]
X. Dong, B. Milholland, and J. Vijg, “Evidence for a limit to human lifespan.,” Nature, vol. 538, no. 7624, pp. 257–259, Oct. 2016. [PubMed]
This paper has been debunked.
@ChristophAdami I thought it sounded fishy, but had come across it in @philipcball’s recent article https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170126-information-theory-and-the-foundation-of-life/ and wanted to dig into some of the research in the general area.
Thanks for flagging it. I wish the publishers did a better job of providing their own caveats after-the-fact.