Reaching 100 years of age used to be so extraordinary that NBC weatherman Willard Scott devoted a few seconds of the Today show to wishing those long-lived “pretty ladies” and “fine gentlemen” much congratulations and continued health on that miraculous milestone. Nowadays, Today could devote half its air time to wishing 100-year-olds well.
Just in the 10 years between 1980 and 1990, the population of people older than 85 years increased by 40 percent. By 1990, there were about 30,000 people who lived past the 100-year mark. If we stay this course, researchers predict that by the time 2080 rolls around, there could be as many as 10 million centenarians. As this legion of graying Americans pushes into triple digits, it’s likely that the record for maximum life span-currently set at 122 years-will be broken.
But where do we reach our limit?
It depends on whom you ask. There are two camps in the study of longevity. One believes that medical technology promises to churn out a future of modern-day Methuselahs. They contend that life expectancy, which is the estimated number of years that a person is expected to live on average, will reach 100 in the next generation. And soon, living to 200, 300, or more will not be out of the question. The second camp believes that all species have a genetic program for growth, development, and reproduction that inadvertently leads to a biological limit to life. As far as life expectancy goes, we’ve just about reached the practical limit, says Dr. S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Chicago.
Through a combination of curing chronic disease and controlling biological aging factors, the day will come when we live in an “ageless society,” says Ronald Klatz, D.O., M.D., biomedical researcher and president of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine in Chicago, one of the folks who believes that we’ve just begun to climb the ladder of longevity. “We won’t suffer from degenerative diseases like heart disease and cancer that plague us today,” he says. “We’ll just die of total organ shutdown when our cells are no longer able to repair and reproduce. That’s at least around age 160.”
Just as splitting an atom was unthinkable in 1928 (but was accomplished in 1938), so will medical technology advance in ways we can’t begin to imagine, adds Dr. George Webster, researcher in molecular biology and aging. “Each year, the National Library of Medicine receives about 1,700 reports on findings in biomedical research. Who ever imagined that we’d be able to clone a sheep? Yet it didn’t take scientists long to figure that out,” Dr. Webster says.
Scientists have already discovered genes that contribute to aging. They understand how hormones decline over time. They have a handle on how our DNA gets damaged through the years. They’ve studied ways to slow metabolism to prolong life. Now they just have to put it all together, says Dr. Webster. “We’ve been able to more than quadruple the life spans of worms by altering certain genes. Once we understand how these genes work, we can start producing substances that stop their action,” he says. “If medical technology grows during the next 50 years at the pace it has grown during the past 50 years, we could push life expectancy into the hundreds. That’s why I tell men of every age to start living healthfully, because if a 40-year-old or even 60-year-old man can make it another 25 years, he’ll be able to reap the benefits of anti-aging medical technology.”
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