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Will humans in the future be able to live forever? Not anytime soon, but someday? Maybe. At least that’s what scientists from the University of Zurich are suggesting.
Researchers from the university’s Human Evolutionary Ecology Group recently published a study in which they claim there may actually be no limit to human lifespans. They made this bold claim in large part due to the fact that, despite previous claims to the contrary, “female and male lifespans continue to linearly increase at a global scale.”
“This remarkably long trend observed since 1840 remains at odds with our expectation that human lifespans must at some point hit a biologically imposed ceiling,” the scientists wrote in the researcher paper published as a preprint on bioRxiv.
In their study, using the Human Mortality Database longevity data from 41 countries, the researchers point out that in the first two decades of this century female maximum lifespans have increased from 84.85 to 87.75 years, a rate of 1.45 years per decade. This is lower than the 2.49 year increases of the previous two decades, and 2.31 years per decade since 1840. However, in men, the rate of increase was 1.96 years per decade in this century, which is very similar to the 2.02 years of the previous two decades and 2.03 per decade since 1840.
“Since all previous claims (beginning in the 1940s) that humans were approaching a longevity ceiling have been shown to be premature, it seems that data from the last two decades do not yet provide conclusive evidence that the long-term global trend has come to a halt,” they wrote.
A previous study on this same issue “predicted that female ‘record life expectancy will reach 100 in six decades’ in the 2060s.”
“Over twenty years later, the updated regression … predicts that this will occur in 2063,” the researchers revealed. “This remains a credible forecast until there is clearer evidence that the global best-practice life expectancy line is definitely leveling off.”
They added that the previous researchers’ “main question was whether biodemographic evidence was already suggesting convergence towards a longevity ceiling, beyond which improvements in medical care and overall living conditions would no longer have an effect on life expectancies. Over twenty years later, the updated best-practice life expectancy seems to indicate that women and men are not approaching such a limit yet.”