This is a very well reported article and I'm grateful it was submitted here for discussion. The article definitely deserves a thoughtful read from beginning to end, as it raises a lot of issues that will have to be considered as research on human aging continues. The comments here posted before this one are interesting too.
Having read the article and the previous comments, I'll jump in with an observation that I've had so much occasion to make here on Hacker News that it is a FAQ block of text I keep off-line for posting here. What's really amazing about fighting human aging is that even with the haphazard approach of tackling one disease at a time, humankind has already made enormous progress in increasing healthy lifespan into old age. Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing" by James Vaupel,[1] originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. Vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. His striking finding is "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."[2]
An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why"[3] Provides some of the background.
Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world.[4]
You can look up websites that will take information you provide and report a personal life expectancy for you based on the information you provide.[5] You may be surprised by what you see. The online longevity calculators are based on historical cohort data and do not reflect any further progress in medicine, public health, or lifestyle improvement that may occur between now and your predicted age of death.
(My life expectancy a year or two ago as calculated by this was lower than for the website above. This website is especially cool, because it shows a confidence interval around the estimate.)
Having read the article and the previous comments, I'll jump in with an observation that I've had so much occasion to make here on Hacker News that it is a FAQ block of text I keep off-line for posting here. What's really amazing about fighting human aging is that even with the haphazard approach of tackling one disease at a time, humankind has already made enormous progress in increasing healthy lifespan into old age. Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing" by James Vaupel,[1] originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. Vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. His striking finding is "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."[2]
An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why"[3] Provides some of the background.
Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world.[4]
You can look up websites that will take information you provide and report a personal life expectancy for you based on the information you provide.[5] You may be surprised by what you see. The online longevity calculators are based on historical cohort data and do not reflect any further progress in medicine, public health, or lifestyle improvement that may occur between now and your predicted age of death.
[1] http://www.demographic-challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...
[2] http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....
[3] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...
[4] http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...
[5] Various life-expectancy calculators:
http://www.livingto100.com/
(My calculated life expectancy a year or two ago predicted I would outlive my mother's current age, and three of my four grandparents.)
http://gosset.wharton.upenn.edu/mortality/perl/CalcForm.html
(My life expectancy a year or two ago as calculated by this was lower than for the website above. This website is especially cool, because it shows a confidence interval around the estimate.)