Humans could live to 130 this century

They got off lightly. A new study has argued that Calment, the world’s oldest woman, could have easily continued much longer. After the age of 108, the research into “semi-supercentenarians” found that in a statistical sense we cease to age.

One definition of ageing is that the probability of death increases as you get older. So an 90 year old is 1,500 times more likely to die in the next year than a 9 year old. There is increasing evidence, though, that this rise eventually plateaus.

Among those who live beyond 110, known as supercentenarians, or 105, known as semi-supercentenarians, the research has added weight to the idea that mortality risk becomes fixed. In their analysis of national databases, which included almost 10,000 French men and women who lived past 105, the scientists could not detect an obvious upper age limit.

This does not mean that such people are immortal: the level at which the annual risk of death becomes fixed is 50 per cent, meaning that surviving each year is a coin toss. What it does mean, the authors of the latest paper contend, is that we should anticipate seeing people exceed Calment’s 122 years, and perhaps even hit 130.

According to their paper, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, for someone 110 years old today, the chances of reaching 130 are the same as throwing 20 heads in a row or about 1 in a million. But if we get enough people to that age, with the advances of modern medicine, that becomes plausible. “The increasing number of supercentenarians makes it possible that the maximum reported age at death will rise to 130 years during the present century,” the scientists write.

More importantly though, they argue, it provides hints at the ageing mechanism itself. Some animals, such as clams, do not age at all and working out why is a key goal of gerontology. “Solid empirical understanding of human mortality at extreme age is important as one basis for research aimed at finding a cure for ageing,” they say.

Professor Andrew Scott, from London Business School, was not involved in the research. He argued there was a limit to how much analyses of older people could tell us. In his view the first super-supercentenarians will reach Methuselah-like ages thanks to science, not statistical chance. “If we are to experience much longer lives than the 122 years of Jeanne Calment it will surely come about as a result (if it comes about at all) of breakthroughs in biology,” he said.

The findings of the paper fit into a current discussion about the extent to which it is possible to extend lives or even, in a sense, “cure” ageing. Scott, author of The New Long Life, said the focus on longevity misses the point. “Whilst longer lives are valuable, the really valuable thing is to get healthspan to match lifespan. When that happens of course we will enormously value further improvements in lifespan.”

What the study did tell us, though, he said is that we can all expect to wrestle with these problems. “What’s really nice about this study is it just emphasises the point that regardless of your age you need to prepare for a longer life ahead than you previously might have imagined. That includes if you are 105!”

And it especially applies if you are making pension arrangements with suspiciously spritely French nonagenarians.

Tom Whipple