How long can human beings live? Although life expectancy has increased significantly over the past century, thanks largely to improved sanitation and medicine, research into hunter-gatherer populations suggests that individuals who escaped disease and violent deaths could live to about their seventh or eighth decade. This means our typical human life span may be static: around 70 years, with an extra decade or so for advanced medical care and cautious behavior. Some geneticists believe a hard limit of of around 115 years is essentially programmed into our genome by evolution.
Other scientists in the fast-moving field of aging research, or geroscience, think we can live much longer. A handful of compounds have been shown to lengthen the life spans of laboratory animals slightly, yet some scientists are more ambitious a lot more ambitious.
João Pedro de Magalhães, a professor of molecular biogerontology at the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing at the University of Birmingham in England, thinks humans could live for 1,000 years. He has scrutinized the genomes of very long-lived animals such as the bowhead whale (which can reach 200 years) and the naked mole rat. His surprising conclusion: if we eliminated aging at the cellular level, humans could live for a millennium and potentially as long as 20,000 years.
How can that be? If aging is programmed, scientists could theoretically reprogram our cells by tweaking genes that are central to aging. This would require technology that we don’t presently have, but Magalhães thinks it can be created. His great-grandfather died of pneumonia—a leading cause of mortality in the 1920s. When Magalhães contracted the same disease as a child, he was cured with a simple dose of penicillin. He thinks scientists can similarly develop therapies for aging, an endeavor to which he has now devoted his career. “I want to cheat death,” he says bluntly.
CJ M
“I want to cheat death,” he says bluntly.
Clearly doesn’t believe in God. There’s a neat spiritual experiment to sort of determine results…….what if the whole world followed you, did what you are thinking of doing, what would be the result?
Josh D
well hell im 37 and just had hip replacement I need some of that
pam
We were created to continually heal, with a brain capacity to continue to grow. Perfectly made to live and enjoy a perfect earthly home. Satan ruined that for us all by Adam’s transgression and from then on we lost perfection and a cap was put on our live expectancy. But Jesus made that sacrifice with his perfect life so we can have that at again. We can live indefinitely as God purposed.
Science is just discovering that.
Matthew W
This scientist’s work is not an affront to nor a confirmation of any religious beliefs. Science and modern medicine have already allowed most of us to cheat death by avoiding or overcoming the many illnesses that ended life prematurely for many people as late as only 100 years ago. The desire to make it possible for people to live longer means that he does not believe in god? That’s what they said about a lot of great scientific work. Any people that feel the need to stifle science or art are destined to fail. As we speak, folks are ridding our schools and libraries of books they disagree with. There is even a place where people believe that god hates music and musical instruments are burned. If science can add a few years to my life, I welcome that time and hope to spend it wisely.