Go ahead and throw away that invitation to my 116th birthday party, because it looks increasingly unlikely.
Not because of any recent medical news. For me, at least.
It's because of recent medical news for all humanity: Three scientists from Albert Einstein College of Medicine published a report that claims that 115 years is likely the outer limits of aging for humans. That's the finish line.
“From now on, this is it. Humans will never get older than 115,” said the lead scientist, Dr. Jan Vijg, ignoring the fact that previous generations of scientists vowed that humans would never fly, never run a mile faster than four minutes and never be able to track Japanese cartoon characters with mobile phones.
Vijg was serious in his opinion, although he refused to answer a question about why he has a last name with the letters j and g appearing consecutively.
Vijg and graduate students Xiao Dong and Brandon Milholland (known as "The Big Three" at Albert Einstein College of Medicine) published their report in the journal Nature, which I receive a day after my copy of the Saturday Evening Post arrives.
For many of us, the first impulse is to disagree. After all, Jeanne Calment died in France in 1997 at age 122, the world record for oldest person. Her item appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records, just a few pages after that photo of the fattest twins riding their tiny motorcycles and a few pages before that creepy guy with the really long fingernails.
Anyhow, the study by Dr. Vijg and his partners break with some recent theories – but their conclusion is based (as expected) on solid science. And any argument with other scientists ends when Vijg says "At what college do you work? It better be good, because I work at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Albert Einstein!"
The Vijg study showed that while the average life span has increased over time, the extreme end – the oldest person in a given decade, for instance – has remained steady.
About 115 years.
Of course, there are the exceptions such as the 122-year-old Calment, who died in France while laughing at the genius of Jerry Lewis. Sacre bleu!
As expected, the Vijg study was a hot topic in the wacky medical community.
“This paper is a good dose of medicine, if you’ll pardon the expression, for those who would say there is no limit to human life span,” said Dr. Leonard P. Guarente, a professor of biology at MIT.
Guarente then stopped talking because he was laughing so hard at his reference to “dose of medicine.” He doubled over for a good five minutes and when he recovered, he attempted to describe the study by saying “The Vijg is up,” but started laughing again and had to leave the room.
Scientists. They're hilarious!
Back to the study, which is not all bad news. Vijg stressed that our quality of life can be improved and that good health is beneficial.
But still, he insists, our DNA limits our life span.
“There’s a good chance to improve health span – that’s the most important thing,” he said. “(But) at some point everything goes wrong and you collapse.”
So there's that, I guess.
Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.
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