Quote from: deisik on June 22, 2015, 10:47:59 AM

Quote from: Bizmark13 on June 22, 2015, 01:12:39 AM

There are only two living people now who were born in the 19th century - both of whom were born in 1899. Just two years ago, that number was six. It's likely that there will be nobody born in the 19th century who is still living in a year or two from now. Sad

Quote from: Balthazar on June 21, 2015, 01:27:57 PM

Quote from: bryant.coleman on June 20, 2015, 05:45:06 AM

Quote from: gentlemand on June 19, 2015, 08:28:34 PM

Surely it's just a genetic lottery win? Humans certainly aren't designed to live that long and people with perfectly respectable lifestyles drop dead in their 50s and 60s every day.

I am not sure whether the secret for longevity lies in the genes or in the lifestyle. But you can't say that humans aren't designed to live that long. There are references from 400 or 500 year ago, about people living up to 100 year or more. As the living standards increase, along with the advancement in the medical science, longevity will increase further.

There are some physiological limits. Approximated limit of average lifespan is about 250 years. If we solve genetic issues then there still would be another limitation due to nature of our brain. To be exact, there is no possibility to remember more than 4000-5000 years of living experience. You won't die but you'll forget anything what happened before last 4000-5000 years of your hypothetically unlimited life. And there will be no way to recover these memories.

Where did you get that number from? Even with huge advances in medical technology and a significantly larger population, the maximum lifespan of humans seems to have a hard limit of about 120 years - not 250. The oldest people today aren't significantly older than the oldest people who lived 100, 200, or 300 years ago even though far more people are now reaching old age than previously. Jeanne Calment was the only person to live past 120 years and she was definitely an outlier.

I also heard that number. It is thought that 250 years is the potential longevity of the brain, that is, how long humans would live if their bodies didn't deteriorate with age. Though it is nothing more than speculation of course

Quote from: Bizmark13 on June 22, 2015, 01:12:39 AM

A cure for all cancers (ignoring the fact that cancer is a collection of diseases with a myriad of causes far too complex to have a single cure) would increase the average lifespan by approximately 10 years. Curing heart disease would probably increase it by another 10 years. But even with the average lifespan at close to 100, I would still expect the oldest humans living in such a world to be no older than 120 years old.

I read that the total elimination of all forms of cancer would only add up 3 to 4 years to the average lifespan. On the hand, the naked mole-rat, the only mammal which doesn't suffer from cancer at all due to its very special immune system, lives up to amazing 30 years (given that rats live only a few years)...

Hmm... You're right. I remembered seeing that 10 years figure on a blog/forum somewhere and never bothered to check it. It seems that curing cancer would only increase the average lifespan by slightly over three years while a cure for cardiovascular disease would increase it by just under seven years.

I wonder if curing both at the same time would yield a far better result, however. The reason why a cure for cancer only results in a three year increase in life expectancy is because of Taeuber's Paradox which states that those who would have died from cancer but didn't would have died from cardiovascular disease or some other age-related condition shortly afterwards anyway (and vice versa).