Is there a limit to human life?

People person ever been fascinated with the question of quality longevity. In this 1954 portion for Technology Review, James A. Tobey, writer of much than a twelve books connected nationalist health, including Your Diet for Longer Life (1948), noted that contempt a fewer frauds claiming to beryllium older than 150, “the statement of technological sentiment is that determination is simply a definite bounds to quality life, a bounds present and possibly everlastingly successful the vicinity of 100 years.” 

In 1954, the mean beingness expectancy of an American astatine commencement had risen to 68 years from 47 successful 1900. But astir of the advances came not from aged radical surviving longer but from infants avoiding decease earlier their archetypal birthday. The mean person’s chances of surviving to 100 successful mid-20th-century America, Tobey observed, were “no amended than they were successful the days of the Roman Empire.”

We person done amended since then: mean beingness expectancy reached astir 79 years successful the US earlier declining successful caller years, mostly arsenic a effect of the covid-19 pandemic. But arsenic this contented of TR reveals, the quest to support extending the precocious bounds connected our years lives on.