losthistory
"People your age will get to live as long as they want," I sometimes say to my younger colleagues. Of course, I am being optimistic about the future of anti-aging research and how it will not only stop aging but reverse it. (See my article "Eternal Youth for All" in the March, 2015 issue.) The Telegraph today is reporting that the demographers at the U.K.'s Office of National Statistics project that the life expectancy of Britons born in the next generation will exceed 100 years. From The Telegraph:
Living beyond 100 will become the norm for children born within the next generation, official projections show. According to estimates published by the Office for National Statistics the average life expectancy for newborn girls in the UK is on course to reach just under 97 years and four months within just over two decades. Baby boys born in 2037 will expect to live until 94 years and four months on average – with many living much longer. The projections, contained in a new report analysing the make-up of the British population, means that typical life expectancies would have increased by around a decade since the 1980s. It is also now predicted that average life female expectancy will reach the once unimaginable milestone of 100 in 2057.
Men will not achieve the century mark until 2087.
These U.K. projections are based on largely straight-line calculations of improving life expectancy and do not take into account likely breakthroughs in anti-aging medicine over the next couple of decades. Our fusty Census Bureau projects that by 2050 average life expectancy for American women will reach 86.2 years and for men 82.2 years by 2050, up from 81.2 and 76.4 respectively.
"The first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already," asserted Aubrey de Grey in 2004, founder of the the anti-aging research Methuselah Foundation and the SENS Research Foundation.
I, for one, sure hope that he's right.
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