According to the Nature journal, most people will not live past 115 years of age. The statement is in direct contrast to the scientific and medical advancements of the past years which focused on assisting people live longer.
CBS News shares that breakthrough in the field of medicine had not only contributed greatly to the improvement of human existence. It has also increased the number of years that people actually lived.
Dr. Jan Vijg, a professor and chair of Genetics at New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and his team disagree. Based on a global demographic data, survival declines after 100 years old. It has also been found that the peak of human lifespan is already set with natural constraints factoring in on the limitations.
The argument is supported by the life of Jeanne Calment. It has been observed that the age of the oldest person on Earth has not risen. The French woman, who died last August 4, 1997, in France has set a human longevity record at the age of 122. It is likely that her mark will stay unsurpassed for a long time.
Information from the Human Mortality Database reveals that the number of people living to the age of 70 in at least 40 nations had increased since 1900. This indicates that life expectancy of the average individual has shot up during the last 100 years.
Researchers argue that since there is no maximum age to speak about, the increase in survival rate should have included both men and women. The analyzed data bare a contrasting side. It points out that the oldest age bracket remained stagnant since 1980 which proposes that there is a natural limit of existence.
The study turns its attention to the age of people who live longest when they died. Taking the average longevity, which is 110, into consideration, the investigation tackles the death occurrence between 1968 and 2006 in the US, the UK, Japan and France. Since Calment's demise, the reported maximum age of death has slightly decreased.
However, not all concur with Vijg's findings. James Vaupel, the founding Director of Germany's Max Planck Institute, reacts that although countries with the greatest increase in survival may have already plateaued, other nations like Japan, which incurs an 83.7-year of probable existence for persons born in 2015, are yet to hit the peak of its life expectancy.
