Is There a Limit to the Human Life Span?

[rangerrebew]

Is There a Limit to the Human Life Span?
By Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor | June 28, 2017 01:00pm ET
 
The average human life span has continued to increase. Will humans ever reach a limit to how long we can live?
 

There may be no limit to how long humans can live, or at least no limit that anyone has found yet, contrary to a suggestion some scientists made last year, five new studies suggest.

In April, Emma Morano, the oldest known human in the world at the time, passed away at the age of 117. Supercentenarians — people older than 110 — such as Morano and Jeanne Calment of France, who died at the record-setting age of 122 in 1997, have led scientists to wonder just how long humans can live. They refer to this concept as maximum life span.

https://www.livescience.com/59645-no-limit-to-human-life-span.html

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Yes.  http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2017.html

[Cripplecreek]

Unfortunately the article wrongly assumes a lengthening human lifespan or at least attributes it to the wrong things.

It was not unusual for men to live well into their 80s and 90s in the 1700s. If a man survived to adulthood and didn't live a particularly hard life there was no reason a man couldn't live as long as we do today assuming they didn't develop a fatal cancer or something.

I remember reading about a patriot considered to be too old for the militia at 79 years old took on a group of British soldiers crossing his farm. He managed to kill 2 officers before multiple gunshots brought him down as well as several bayonet wounds. The Brits left him for dead but he survived, recovered and lived to be like 97 years old.

I think modern human lifespans have always been within reach of a century barring animal attack, violence, starvation, disease from living in urban filth etc.

That said I do think that we will eventually expand the human lifespan dramatically when we can build advanced robotic bodies and eventually flesh and blood bodies. The real test will be the brain. A human brain can't be kept alive and healthy indefinitely so it will all rest on whether we can upload a human brain into a computerized brain or a cloned brain.