Statistical hint of a wall of death at 115-116 years

There might be a wall of death at around the age of 115 to 116 years of age. There are a few confirmed people who live past that age but it is a tiny number.

Only about one in 1,000 centenarians (people who live to 100) live past the age of 110. In 2003, the Gerontology Research Group estimated that there were 300–450 living supercentenarians in the world.

Jeanne Calment of France, who died in 1997 aged 122 years, 164 days, had the longest human lifespan documented. The oldest verified man ever recorded is Jiroemon Kimura of Japan, who died in 2013 aged 116 years and 54 days.

There are over 100 verified people currently 111 years or older.

Past the age of 114, there is 99% certainty that there is a different survival rate.

Effective antiaging or aging reversal medicine will be needed to get people living past 110-114 in large numbers.

66 thoughts on “Statistical hint of a wall of death at 115-116 years”

  1. How can I make that statement? Look, any finite probability of death, however small, will eventually sum up to effectively unity. Even if you’re not aging, your life is not going to be perfectly safe. Maybe a plane will crash on your head, maybe a gamma ray burster will go off a couple light years away, eventually some cosmological cause will end you even if you render yourself immune to disease and conventional accidents. Anybody who tells you you can live “forever” is selling religion, not science. All science can promise is a very, very long time.

  2. How can I make that statement? Look any finite probability of death however small will eventually sum up to effectively unity. Even if you’re not aging your life is not going to be perfectly safe. Maybe a plane will crash on your head maybe a gamma ray burster will go off a couple light years away eventually some cosmological cause will end you even if you render yourself immune to disease and conventional accidents.Anybody who tells you you can live forever”” is selling religion”” not science. All science can promise is a very”” very long time.”””

  3. Rob Neff, since your commenting here I will assume your intelligent. Attacking the author of a study is pointless. Attack the study instead if you disagree with it. Just be sure you have your ducks in a row with facts not speculation. I to am a programer, although admittedly probably not as professional as you. When you say “Growth rate of technology is not relevant when talking about biology. ” I would respond by saying you are right but biology in quickly becoming a true science. All we are is in our current DNA. When that DNA and all its variants become maped everything genetic will become possible. Including the most important of all – enhancing all our IQs. Brett Bellmore, how can you make that statement about yourself or anyone else, unless you feel you are a prophet. I can say it based of hard science studies not prophecies. I guess you could say you did a study and everyone the ever lived in the past (over 150 years) has died at some point. Well, I will let it go but like I said your in for a wild ride rather soon. 🙂

  4. Rob Neff since your commenting here I will assume your intelligent. Attacking the author of a study is pointless. Attack the study instead if you disagree with it. Just be sure you have your ducks in a row with facts not speculation. I to am a programer although admittedly probably not as professional as you. When you say Growth rate of technology is not relevant when talking about biology. “” I would respond by saying you are right but biology in quickly becoming a true science. All we are is in our current DNA. When that DNA and all its variants become maped everything genetic will become possible. Including the most important of all – enhancing all our IQs.Brett Bellmore”” how can you make that statement about yourself or anyone else unless you feel you are a prophet. I can say it based of hard science studies not prophecies. I guess you could say you did a study and everyone the ever lived in the past (over 150 years) has died at some point. Well”” I will let it go but like I said your in for a wild ride rather soon. :-)”””

  5. How can I make that statement? Look, any finite probability of death, however small, will eventually sum up to effectively unity. Even if you’re not aging, your life is not going to be perfectly safe. Maybe a plane will crash on your head, maybe a gamma ray burster will go off a couple light years away, eventually some cosmological cause will end you even if you render yourself immune to disease and conventional accidents.

    Anybody who tells you you can live “forever” is selling religion, not science. All science can promise is a very, very long time.

  6. It depends on who you’re talking to. It sounds like the Singularity faithful, who are unquestioning in the religious belief of reaching their “rapture”. But if you talk to medical doctors, statisticians and other trained real-world people, they will say what you are saying. The best we can do, based on past trends, is to “square the curve”. That is, to get more people past the age of 80, 85 in relatively good health. After that point, genetics is the major determiner of who lives to 90 and who lives to 115, but still almost nobody will get to 120. There are animal studies that hint it could be feasible to improve our maximum lifespan by maybe 50% (get to age 150 for instance). But that is all highly hypothetical, and when/if we can have an indefinite lifespan thru more invasive manipulation is simply not predictable.

  7. It depends on who you’re talking to. It sounds like the Singularity faithful who are unquestioning in the religious belief of reaching their rapture””.But if you talk to medical doctors”” statisticians and other trained real-world people they will say what you are saying. The best we can do based on past trends”” is to “”””square the curve””””. That is”” to get more people past the age of 80 85 in relatively good health. After that point genetics is the major determiner of who lives to 90 and who lives to 115 but still almost nobody will get to 120.There are animal studies that hint it could be feasible to improve our maximum lifespan by maybe 50{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} (get to age 150 for instance). But that is all highly hypothetical”” and when/if we can have an indefinite lifespan thru more invasive manipulation is simply not predictable.”””

  8. True, and in fact most of the advances in the hardware have been eaten up by coding less efficiently; I contrast the first copy of Turbo Pascal I used in college, a complete development system fit on a double sided floppy with room for the program you were developing, with the last version I bought for home use before giving up on it, which fit on a stack of CDs, and “hello world” would not have fit on that floppy. It ran a bit faster, sure, but only because the hardware was enormously faster. Equally true for the biology, it was just this year or last that they discovered that the lymphatic system actually DID extend to the brain. That’s a pretty basic thing to have gotten wrong! However, I do follow the biology, (Though an engineer, human biology was my 2nd major in college.) and despite the dizzying detail yet to be uncovered, a critical mass of detail on the fundamentals is accumulating. Not enough to engineer immortality tomorrow, to be sure, but probably enough that within a decade or two we’ll be able to considerably slow aging, and even reverse some aspects of it. In particular, I think we’re closing in on dealing with both senescent cells and mitochondrial dysfunction. (Not incidentally, related.) Doing so will directly impact cancer research, as the mitochondria are part of the apoptosis system cancers must defeat to be a threat. (One reason cancers generally run off anaerobic metabolism of glucose is that they lack functioning mitochondria.) Once you’ve knocked off senescent cells and mitochondrial decay, and can effectively fight cancer, people should expect to routinely live into their 90’s or 100’s in reasonably good health.

  9. True and in fact most of the advances in the hardware have been eaten up by coding less efficiently; I contrast the first copy of Turbo Pascal I used in college a complete development system fit on a double sided floppy with room for the program you were developing with the last version I bought for home use before giving up on it which fit on a stack of CDs and hello world”” would not have fit on that floppy. It ran a bit faster”” sure but only because the hardware was enormously faster.Equally true for the biology it was just this year or last that they discovered that the lymphatic system actually DID extend to the brain. That’s a pretty basic thing to have gotten wrong!However I do follow the biology (Though an engineer human biology was my 2nd major in college.) and despite the dizzying detail yet to be uncovered a critical mass of detail on the fundamentals is accumulating. Not enough to engineer immortality tomorrow to be sure but probably enough that within a decade or two we’ll be able to considerably slow aging and even reverse some aspects of it.In particular I think we’re closing in on dealing with both senescent cells and mitochondrial dysfunction. (Not incidentally related.) Doing so will directly impact cancer research as the mitochondria are part of the apoptosis system cancers must defeat to be a threat. (One reason cancers generally run off anaerobic metabolism of glucose is that they lack functioning mitochondria.)Once you’ve knocked off senescent cells and mitochondrial decay and can effectively fight cancer”” people should expect to routinely live into their 90’s or 100’s in reasonably good health.”””

  10. As George Burns said, most people die in their 70’s and 80’s. Fewer people die in their 90’s. Almost nobody died after age 100, so he figured at that point he had it made. He’s an example of genetics trumping lifestyle for longevity. He didn’t do anything special, and was famous for always having a cigar in hand, yet he lived to 100.

  11. As George Burns said most people die in their 70’s and 80’s. Fewer people die in their 90’s. Almost nobody died after age 100 so he figured at that point he had it made.He’s an example of genetics trumping lifestyle for longevity. He didn’t do anything special and was famous for always having a cigar in hand yet he lived to 100.

  12. That’s scary stuff. I had to stop taking my statin because of peripheral neuropathy, and I see some other side effects of statins in that list of transthretin amyloidosis effects as well. Makes me wonder what statins really do to the body. Hopefully they’ll find a way to clean that stuff up as well. There’s definitely a market for it given the relation to Alzheimer’s.

  13. That’s scary stuff. I had to stop taking my statin because of peripheral neuropathy and I see some other side effects of statins in that list of transthretin amyloidosis effects as well. Makes me wonder what statins really do to the body. Hopefully they’ll find a way to clean that stuff up as well. There’s definitely a market for it given the relation to Alzheimer’s.

  14. Ray Kurzwel is in the company of Elon Musk and Nicholas Tesla. A visionary, quite likely a genius in some aspects, but a bit wild-eyed in other areas and just possibly marching towards total crazydom. Time will tell, of course. I’m 50 and I’ll be happy if this is the 1/2 way point for me. I don’t expect indefinite life extension to ever be available for me. Growth rate of technology is not relevant when talking about biology. Kurzweil’s ideas that all things will accelerate exponentially like transistor density has been doing, and not be limited by physical constraints specific to each field, are hard to swallow by a critical, rational mind. I write software, and I can tell you as a fact that the capabilities of software has not improved anything like hardware has. In biology we are just now realizing how much we don’t know about our immune systems, gastro tract (including interactions with our microbiome), and other aspects of health and aging. It will take decades to do real world experiments. Experiments on mice, lab-grown organs, and in computer models are nice, but as many promising ideas have shown, they won’t take the place of real human trials.

  15. Ray Kurzwel is in the company of Elon Musk and Nicholas Tesla. A visionary quite likely a genius in some aspects but a bit wild-eyed in other areas and just possibly marching towards total crazydom. Time will tell of course.I’m 50 and I’ll be happy if this is the 1/2 way point for me. I don’t expect indefinite life extension to ever be available for me.Growth rate of technology is not relevant when talking about biology. Kurzweil’s ideas that all things will accelerate exponentially like transistor density has been doing and not be limited by physical constraints specific to each field are hard to swallow by a critical rational mind. I write software and I can tell you as a fact that the capabilities of software has not improved anything like hardware has. In biology we are just now realizing how much we don’t know about our immune systems gastro tract (including interactions with our microbiome) and other aspects of health and aging. It will take decades to do real world experiments. Experiments on mice lab-grown organs and in computer models are nice but as many promising ideas have shown they won’t take the place of real human trials.

  16. Death is not optional for anybody, in the long run, given the laws of thermodynamics. I’d settle for not being doomed to die in a predictable, short time frame. I’ve told people I’d prefer to die of proton decay, but that’s mostly joking.

  17. Death is not optional for anybody in the long run given the laws of thermodynamics. I’d settle for not being doomed to die in a predictable short time frame.I’ve told people I’d prefer to die of proton decay but that’s mostly joking.

  18. Rob Neff, since your commenting here I will assume your intelligent. Attacking the author of a study is pointless. Attack the study instead if you disagree with it. Just be sure you have your ducks in a row with facts not speculation.

    I to am a programer, although admittedly probably not as professional as you. When you say “Growth rate of technology is not relevant when talking about biology. ” I would respond by saying you are right but biology in quickly becoming a true science. All we are is in our current DNA. When that DNA and all its variants become maped everything genetic will become possible. Including the most important of all – enhancing all our IQs.
    Brett Bellmore, how can you make that statement about yourself or anyone else, unless you feel you are a prophet. I can say it based of hard science studies not prophecies. I guess you could say you did a study and everyone the ever lived in the past (over 150 years) has died at some point.
    Well, I will let it go but like I said your in for a wild ride rather soon. 🙂

  19. Brett Bellmore, your in for a very wild ride! Death will be optional for you. Check this study out of one of our GREATEST scientists(Ray Kurzweil) about the growth rate of technology. And rechecked by many others with same results who could not believe the results of Ray Kurzweil study. The error rate is figured by projected years / length of study(2000 years), Time of Christ to present day. Example 50 years/2000 years = .025% error over 50 year projection. Extremely small error rate This is the study’s results http://theemergingfuture.com/docs/Speed-Technological-Advancement.pdf

  20. Brett Bellmore your in for a very wild ride! Death will be optional for you. Check this study out of one of our GREATEST scientists(Ray Kurzweil) about the growth rate of technology. And rechecked by many others with same results who could not believe the results of Ray Kurzweil study. The error rate is figured by projected years / length of study(2000 years) Time of Christ to present day. Example 50 years/2000 years = .025{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} error over 50 year projection. Extremely small error rateThis is the study’s resultshttp://theemergingfuture.com/docs/Speed-Technological-Advancement.pdf

  21. The maximum bandwidth on your copper phone line was actually 56k. DSL got around this by retrofitting portions of the phone line (removing load coils). Uverse gets around this by moving the infrastructure from existing fixed facilities to locally within a neighborhood.

  22. The maximum bandwidth on your copper phone line was actually 56k. DSL got around this by retrofitting portions of the phone line (removing load coils). Uverse gets around this by moving the infrastructure from existing fixed facilities to locally within a neighborhood.

  23. Personally, I’m 59; I figure I’m either going to be a member of the last generation to die of old age, or the first generation to not die of old age. Depends on how optimistic I’m feeling on any given day. But I’m a lot more optimistic about it now that there’s some serious efforts being made, instead of it being a fringe effort like cryonics.

  24. Personally I’m 59; I figure I’m either going to be a member of the last generation to die of old age or the first generation to not die of old age. Depends on how optimistic I’m feeling on any given day.But I’m a lot more optimistic about it now that there’s some serious efforts being made instead of it being a fringe effort like cryonics.

  25. It seems that the deleterious effects of sencessent cells are all over the place, but they are not the only cause. If we are lucky, and eliminating the sencessent cells alone could give us a life extension of 10-20 years (with the respective slowdown of aging-related damage), then we will face the other causes. It either could be a miracle comparable to antibiotics, that works easily and across the board, or it could be more subtle and specific. Unity bio are concentrating on the arthritis as a fist stepping stone to approve the therapy for humans. They don’t want to talk big so not to scare the regulators and investors.

  26. It seems that the deleterious effects of sencessent cells are all over the place but they are not the only cause. If we are lucky and eliminating the sencessent cells alone could give us a life extension of 10-20 years (with the respective slowdown of aging-related damage) then we will face the other causes. It either could be a miracle comparable to antibiotics that works easily and across the board or it could be more subtle and specific. Unity bio are concentrating on the arthritis as a fist stepping stone to approve the therapy for humans. They don’t want to talk big so not to scare the regulators and investors.

  27. It depends on who you’re talking to. It sounds like the Singularity faithful, who are unquestioning in the religious belief of reaching their “rapture”.

    But if you talk to medical doctors, statisticians and other trained real-world people, they will say what you are saying. The best we can do, based on past trends, is to “square the curve”. That is, to get more people past the age of 80, 85 in relatively good health. After that point, genetics is the major determiner of who lives to 90 and who lives to 115, but still almost nobody will get to 120.

    There are animal studies that hint it could be feasible to improve our maximum lifespan by maybe 50% (get to age 150 for instance). But that is all highly hypothetical, and when/if we can have an indefinite lifespan thru more invasive manipulation is simply not predictable.

  28. True, and in fact most of the advances in the hardware have been eaten up by coding less efficiently; I contrast the first copy of Turbo Pascal I used in college, a complete development system fit on a double sided floppy with room for the program you were developing, with the last version I bought for home use before giving up on it, which fit on a stack of CDs, and “hello world” would not have fit on that floppy. It ran a bit faster, sure, but only because the hardware was enormously faster.

    Equally true for the biology, it was just this year or last that they discovered that the lymphatic system actually DID extend to the brain. That’s a pretty basic thing to have gotten wrong!

    However, I do follow the biology, (Though an engineer, human biology was my 2nd major in college.) and despite the dizzying detail yet to be uncovered, a critical mass of detail on the fundamentals is accumulating. Not enough to engineer immortality tomorrow, to be sure, but probably enough that within a decade or two we’ll be able to considerably slow aging, and even reverse some aspects of it.

    In particular, I think we’re closing in on dealing with both senescent cells and mitochondrial dysfunction. (Not incidentally, related.) Doing so will directly impact cancer research, as the mitochondria are part of the apoptosis system cancers must defeat to be a threat. (One reason cancers generally run off anaerobic metabolism of glucose is that they lack functioning mitochondria.)

    Once you’ve knocked off senescent cells and mitochondrial decay, and can effectively fight cancer, people should expect to routinely live into their 90’s or 100’s in reasonably good health.

  29. As George Burns said, most people die in their 70’s and 80’s. Fewer people die in their 90’s. Almost nobody died after age 100, so he figured at that point he had it made.

    He’s an example of genetics trumping lifestyle for longevity. He didn’t do anything special, and was famous for always having a cigar in hand, yet he lived to 100.

  30. That’s scary stuff. I had to stop taking my statin because of peripheral neuropathy, and I see some other side effects of statins in that list of transthretin amyloidosis effects as well. Makes me wonder what statins really do to the body. Hopefully they’ll find a way to clean that stuff up as well. There’s definitely a market for it given the relation to Alzheimer’s.

  31. Ray Kurzwel is in the company of Elon Musk and Nicholas Tesla. A visionary, quite likely a genius in some aspects, but a bit wild-eyed in other areas and just possibly marching towards total crazydom. Time will tell, of course.

    I’m 50 and I’ll be happy if this is the 1/2 way point for me. I don’t expect indefinite life extension to ever be available for me.

    Growth rate of technology is not relevant when talking about biology. Kurzweil’s ideas that all things will accelerate exponentially like transistor density has been doing, and not be limited by physical constraints specific to each field, are hard to swallow by a critical, rational mind. I write software, and I can tell you as a fact that the capabilities of software has not improved anything like hardware has. In biology we are just now realizing how much we don’t know about our immune systems, gastro tract (including interactions with our microbiome), and other aspects of health and aging. It will take decades to do real world experiments. Experiments on mice, lab-grown organs, and in computer models are nice, but as many promising ideas have shown, they won’t take the place of real human trials.

  32. Death is not optional for anybody, in the long run, given the laws of thermodynamics. I’d settle for not being doomed to die in a predictable, short time frame.

    I’ve told people I’d prefer to die of proton decay, but that’s mostly joking.

  33. Brett Bellmore, your in for a very wild ride! Death will be optional for you.

    Check this study out of one of our GREATEST scientists(Ray Kurzweil) about the growth rate of technology. And rechecked by many others with same results who could not believe the results of Ray Kurzweil study. The error rate is figured by projected years / length of study(2000 years), Time of Christ to present day. Example 50 years/2000 years = .025% error over 50 year projection. Extremely small error rate
    This is the study’s results
    http://theemergingfuture.com/docs/Speed-Technological-Advancement.pdf

  34. I remember when they said that the MAXIMUM bandwidth on copper phone wire was 56k – which seemed fine to me as I upgraded my 9,600 bit/s connection. Seems a little funny now that I’m running GPS on that same line. Wonder if there’s some kind of parallel here? Using the same multiplier in my massively under-estimated modem example, let’s re-calc: 115 x 20,000 = 2,300,000 – that’s a nice lifetime!

  35. I remember when they said that the MAXIMUM bandwidth on copper phone wire was 56k – which seemed fine to me as I upgraded my 9600 bit/s connection. Seems a little funny now that I’m running GPS on that same line. Wonder if there’s some kind of parallel here? Using the same multiplier in my massively under-estimated modem example let’s re-calc: 115 x 20000 = 2300000 – that’s a nice lifetime!

  36. The maximum bandwidth on your copper phone line was actually 56k. DSL got around this by retrofitting portions of the phone line (removing load coils). Uverse gets around this by moving the infrastructure from existing fixed facilities to locally within a neighborhood.

  37. Personally, I’m 59; I figure I’m either going to be a member of the last generation to die of old age, or the first generation to not die of old age. Depends on how optimistic I’m feeling on any given day.

    But I’m a lot more optimistic about it now that there’s some serious efforts being made, instead of it being a fringe effort like cryonics.

  38. I have been saying this all along! Where is all the people who said it is not true? There IS a wall around 110 or maybe the wall already starts at 100. Thanks to Brian for pointing it out

  39. I have been saying this all along! Where is all the people who said it is not true? There IS a wall around 110 or maybe the wall already starts at 100. Thanks to Brian for pointing it out

  40. I am 73, so I wish they would hurry also. But like everything else, one step at a time. Don’t set the concept back by hurrying it and screwing it up.

  41. I am 73 so I wish they would hurry also. But like everything else one step at a time. Don’t set the concept back by hurrying it and screwing it up.

  42. It seems that the deleterious effects of sencessent cells are all over the place, but they are not the only cause. If we are lucky, and eliminating the sencessent cells alone could give us a life extension of 10-20 years (with the respective slowdown of aging-related damage), then we will face the other causes. It either could be a miracle comparable to antibiotics, that works easily and across the board, or it could be more subtle and specific. Unity bio are concentrating on the arthritis as a fist stepping stone to approve the therapy for humans. They don’t want to talk big so not to scare the regulators and investors.

  43. Senescent cells are the cause of most of the diseases of aging, but unity biotechnology seems only concerned in the senescent cells that cause osteoarthritis. We need to clear the body of these senescent cells not just the knees.

  44. Senescent cells are the cause of most of the diseases of aging but unity biotechnology seems only concerned in the senescent cells that cause osteoarthritis. We need to clear the body of these senescent cells not just the knees.

  45. I remember when they said that the MAXIMUM bandwidth on copper phone wire was 56k – which seemed fine to me as I upgraded my 9,600 bit/s connection. Seems a little funny now that I’m running GPS on that same line. Wonder if there’s some kind of parallel here? Using the same multiplier in my massively under-estimated modem example, let’s re-calc: 115 x 20,000 = 2,300,000 – that’s a nice lifetime!

  46. I have been saying this all along!

    Where is all the people who said it is not true?

    There IS a wall around 110 or maybe the wall already starts at 100.
    Thanks to Brian for pointing it out

  47. Senescent cells are the cause of most of the diseases of aging, but unity biotechnology seems only concerned in the senescent cells that cause osteoarthritis. We need to clear the body of these senescent cells not just the knees.

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