Human longevity has its limits

What’s News? is a critical look into the latest aging & longevity news and ideas.

Summary: I’m posting this screenshot of an otherwise non-public letter published this week in the journal Nature. The letter, from three scientists from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, disputes a recent critique (by a noted skeptic of so-called blue zones) of a paper they wrote 10 years ago on the limits of human lifespan. The scientists claim that the oldest living human at any given time is probably around 115 and that the chances of anyone living past 125 is less than 0.0001%.

Context: Plenty of scientists, and many, many venture-backed longevity entrepreneurs, dispute the 125-year human age limit. These guys think someone will probably reach 126 by then end of this century. Bryan “Don’t Die” Johnson, the star of a 2024 Netflix series called “The Man Who Wants To Live Forever,” probably won’t. The oldest verified human in history was Jeanne Calment of France, who lived to 122 years and 164 days before dying in 1997. No one since has been verified to reach 125.

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