The problem of eternal life, or at least the search for the limit of life expectancy, has occupied the minds of people for many centuries. Trying to solve this mystery, scientists decided to study data on super-longevity - people who have lived for more than a hundred years. They hope this will help them understand why some people live longer than others.
Jan Vijg, a molecular geneticist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, claims that human life expectancy has reached its maximum. In a study published in October 2016, he calculated that most people shouldn't expect to live more than 115 years. This is the lifespan of most super-longevity.
Danish demographer James Vaupel disagrees with Vig's conclusions. He, and other researchers, claims that the calculations made by the geneticist are erroneous and not true.
Siegfried Hekimi of McGill University in Canada agrees with them, claiming that his research team analyzed how the length of centenarians in the United States, Britain, France and Japan has changed since 1968. The researchers argue that both the average and maximum life expectancy continue to increase, and the reasons for them to stop growing have not yet been found.
Joop de Beer, a demographer from the Netherlands, gives his data. According to calculations made by him and his colleagues, life expectancy could reach 125 years by 2070. These results were obtained by the authors after analyzing data on long-lived women from Japan, where the number of people who have crossed the 100-year-old threshold is rapidly increasing.
In general, most researchers agree that if people cannot live forever, then the existing limit is well over 120 years.
There is also a third point of view. Scientists who adhere to it believe that there are so many people on Earth, and so few super-longevity that it is very difficult to draw any correct conclusions on such a small sample. In any case, for now, after all, older people began to overcome the 110-year mark not so long ago.