Dr. Jan Vijg, Xiao Dong and Brandon Milholland have recently published a study on the lifespan of people. Vijg revealed that humans will never get older than 115. However, other researchers disagree on the latest findings. Apparently, human longevity has been an issue among scientists for quite some time.
According to The New York Times, the researchers have discovered that the fastest-growing portion of society has been old people. They based this on survival and mortality data.
Apparently, Vijg and his colleagues have sorted the number of living people of varying ages in a year. From these numbers, they are able to compute the population growth of each age. Vijg cited an example like that in France during the 1920s. 85-year-old women had the fastest growth rate.
In the 1990s, 102-year-old French women had the fastest growth. However, the trend seemed to shift. Otherwise, France could have 110-year-olds as the fastest-growing group today. Unfortunately, this is also the case for 40 other countries.
Vijg explained that it has stalled about a decade ago. The limit for human's longevity might have been reached already.
To further prove this, they studied the International Database on Longevity. The said database is actually assembled by Dr. James Vaupel of Max-Planck Odense Center on the Biodemography of Aging.
Apparently, Vaupel has been rejecting such claims for so long. The New York Times reports that Vaupel even called the recent study "a travesty".
The said database contained detailed accounts on 534 people. They found out that a person had reached 111 years of age in 1968. It went up to 115 years in the 1990s. Again, the trend has changed like in the previous case.
Milholland said that they expect that the oldest person alive will be around 115 years for the foreseeable future. Vijg reminds people to focus on improving their health span rather than extending the lifespan.
University of Southern California Longevity Institute Professor Valter Longo also agrees in an interview with the Business Insider. But he added that there could be enough support for life extension research.
The study has been published in Nature on Oct. 5.
