The “Immutable Force” Stopping Us From Living Longer

According to Professor Jay Olshansky, not only is immortality impossible, but we’ve also reached the upper limit of life expectancy.

While medical research continues to advance, Olshansky said further medical improvements will do little to extend overall life expectancy.

Professor Jay Olshansky analysed life and death data from the last 34 years – and he thinks we’ve reached the peak of how long people can live. On today’s episode of The Briefing, Sacha Barbour Gatt speaks with the epidemiology professor about why not living to 100 could actually be a good thing.

“Once you get people out into their 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond, they become exposed to the one currently immutable force that makes it difficult to make us live much longer, which is the biological process of ageing,” said Olshansky.

Olshansky said that improvements to medicine have already helped extend people’s life expectancy, but as a result, more people were suffering from medical issues associated with ageing.

“The price of these longer lives is the rise of heart disease, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer’s, and all of these things that go wrong with these bodies.”

Even developing cures for these diseases would not dramatically shift life expectancy, said Olshansky, as ageing would still cause “notable increases in frailty and disability.”

Instead of researching increased life expectancy, Olshansky said the focus should be on “health extension” to reduce the health issues associated with ageing.

While some organisations have posited that significant increases in life expectancy are possible, Olshansky said those are “biologically naive comments.”

“Only one person made it to 122. So anything higher than that is made up out of thin air.”

By Zack Goutzoulas, a Master of Journalism student at the University of Melbourne.

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