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Humans Could Live up to 150 Years, New Research Suggests

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Humans Could Live up to 150 Years, New Research Suggests

#111

Post by varjag »

rantwasp wrote: post #103
narush wrote: post #29

Taking this with a grain of salt, of course, but cool! Worth pointing out the concept of "healthspan," which is pretty much like it sounds like: how long you stay healthy to do the things you want to do. Long lifespan seems worthwhile if it's accompanied by a long healthspan as well.

this person gets it. who wants to live to 150 is you’re in constant pain, take 150 medications/day and you cannot move? now, let’s say that at 90s you could do what a 40yo can do. GAME CHANGING!

Long life in poor health is statistically possible but at the same time not very frequent.

Re: Humans Could Live up to 150 Years, New Research Suggests

#112

Post by hodgesrm »

WJW wrote: post #78
melling wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it’s just a number. The point is that if we made the effort, there’s likely easy things we can do to extend life beyond 100. Studying Blue Zones, for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone We really haven’t made an effort to study aging. Why do some people live well into their 90’s and appear to be in good health? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Van_Dyke

> We really haven’t made an effort to study aging. We haven't? Just 2 seconds of googling "study aging" brings up results from places like Harvard, the NIH, RAND and hundreds of other universities where people study aging all day everyday.

Indeed. Geriatric medicine has been a thing for millennia. [1] I worked at the UW Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in Seattle for several years in the 1980s. Research on aging was a major topic. The minimal progress on cures for Alzheimer's since that time should be sobering to anyone claiming that we can hack humans to extend lifespan significantly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geriatrics

Re: Humans Could Live up to 150 Years, New Research Suggests

#113

Post by grishka »

narush wrote: post #29

Taking this with a grain of salt, of course, but cool! Worth pointing out the concept of "healthspan," which is pretty much like it sounds like: how long you stay healthy to do the things you want to do. Long lifespan seems worthwhile if it's accompanied by a long healthspan as well.

I don't understand this whole idea of "healthspan". Making people not age at all is the endgame for medicine as a science. Anything lesser would still be putting an enormous strain on healthcare systems to make dying people die a bit slower. And if you've solved aging, there's not such a thing as a lifespan any more because people would only be dying of accidents.

It's definitely not going to work such that someone lives to 80 with a health of a 25-year-old and then something clicks and they start having age-related conditions, all of them at once for good measure.

Re: Humans Could Live up to 150 Years, New Research Suggests

#114

Post by optimalsolver »

WJW wrote: post #85
koolba wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you reverse that and think about all the wonders and scientific progress that’s been made up till now, it’s easy to say that’s it never been a better time to be alive.

It's pretty interesting how people are always upset about not living forever or getting to witness the future while nobody ever seems to be bothered that they were born too late to see incredible sights like dinosaurs or getting to see the Incan empire at its peak or something.

If you think about it, the further you're born into the future the more likely it you'll be able to see the things you're talking about.

Re: Humans Could Live up to 150 Years, New Research Suggests

#115

Post by hodgesrm »

melling wrote: post #104
WJW wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We really haven’t made an effort to study aging. We haven't? Just 2 seconds of googling "study aging" brings up results from places like Harvard, the NIH, RAND and hundreds of other universities where people study aging all day everyday.

How much money are we spending? I’m sure it’s getting some research but compared to other medical research I don’t think it amounts to much

The 2020 budget request for the National Institutes on Aging was ca. $2.7B US. [1] The overall budget of the National Institutes of Health for 2020 was $42B US. [2]

[1] https://www.nia.nih.gov/about/budget/fy-2020-justification-b...

[2] https://www.aip.org/fyi/2020/final-fy20-appropriations-natio...

Re: Humans Could Live up to 150 Years, New Research Suggests

#116

Post by dotcommand »

mgh2 wrote: post #11

Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” -Genesis 6:3

"And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died." - Genesis 9:29

You can argue that Noah was "grandfathered in" since he was born before the 120 year rule. But..

"And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters." - Genesis 11:13

Re: Humans Could Live up to 150 Years, New Research Suggests

#118

Post by mrwh »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #13

All these types of articles always include photos of Calment, even though it's highly likely she was a fraud

There's a good New Yorker piece on this: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/17/was-jeanne-cal...

TL/DR: on balance the author concludes that it's easier to believe that she was genuine, all in all.

Re: Humans Could Live up to 150 Years, New Research Suggests

#119

Post by [deleted] »

stfp wrote: post #25
melling wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

120 years would be a great start. Imagine the world 120 years ago in 1900. The airplane hadn’t been invented. Cars were still a novelty. Special Relativity hadn’t been discovered.

Median scenario: so you grow up in that world, then go through 2 world wars, a few pandemics, the loss or death of most of your friends and family, gradually disconnect from the rest of society, just so you can see what amazing thing humanity will invent next (spoiler alert: it's more phones and huge cars and maybe a dozen folks living in tunnels on mars), while the forests are ripped out and the oceans boil and natu…

[deleted]

Re: Humans Could Live up to 150 Years, New Research Suggests

#120

Post by bcrosby95 »

stfp wrote: post #25
melling wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

120 years would be a great start. Imagine the world 120 years ago in 1900. The airplane hadn’t been invented. Cars were still a novelty. Special Relativity hadn’t been discovered.

Median scenario: so you grow up in that world, then go through 2 world wars, a few pandemics, the loss or death of most of your friends and family, gradually disconnect from the rest of society, just so you can see what amazing thing humanity will invent next (spoiler alert: it's more phones and huge cars and maybe a dozen folks living in tunnels on mars), while the forests are ripped out and the oceans boil and natu…

> My grandma is 105 years old and is pretty much waiting for it to be over.

I'm curious - are those her words or yours?

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