The World's Deadliest Distinction--Why Aren't the World's Oldest People Getting Older?

From Slate. Here's a Google map of super-centenarians from 2010:

"Last month, a 114-year-old former schoolteacher from Georgia named Besse Cooper became the world's oldest living person. Her predecessor, Brazil's Maria Gomes Valentim, was 114 when she died. So was the oldest living person before her, and the one before her. In fact, eight of the last nine "world's oldest" titleholders were 114 when they achieved the distinction. Here's the morbid part: All but two were still 114 when they passed it on. Those two? They died at 115.

The celebration surrounding Cooper when she assumed the title, then, might as well have been accompanied by condolences. If historical trends hold, she will likely be dead within a year.

It's no surprise that it's hard to stay the "world's oldest" for very long. These people are, after all, really old. What's surprising is just how consistent the numbers have been. Just seven people whose ages could be fully verified by the Gerontology Research Group have ever made it past 115. Only two of those seven lived to see the 21st century. The longest-living person ever, a French woman named Jeanne Calment, died at age 122 in August 1997; no one since 2000 has come within five years of matching her longevity.

The inventor Ray Kurzweil, famous for bold predictions that occasionally come true, estimated in 2005 that, within 20 years, advances in medical technology would enable humans to extend their lifespans indefinitely. With six years gone and 14 to go, his prophecy doesn't seem that much closer to coming true. What happened to modern medicine giving us longer lives? Why aren't we getting any older?

We are living longer—at least, some of us are. Life expectancies in most countries not ravaged by AIDS have been rising gradually for decades, and the average American today can expect to live 79 years—four years longer than the average in 1990. In many developed countries, the super-old are among the fastest-growing demographics. (There is evidence that this progress may be grinding to a halt among some demographics, however.) But raising the upper bounds of the human lifespan is turning out to be trickier than increasing the average person's life expectancy. This may be a case where, as with flying cars, a popular vision of technological progress runs afoul of reality's constraints.

In the past few years, the global count of super-centenarians—people 110 and older—has leveled off at about 80. And the maximum age hasn't budged. Robert Young, senior gerontology consultant for the Guinness Book of World Records, says, "The more people are turning 110, the more people are dying at 110."

Young calls this the "rectangularization of the mortality curve." To illustrate it, he points to Japan, which in 1990 had 3,000 people aged 100 and over, with the oldest being 114. Twenty years later, Japan has an estimated 44,000 people over the age of 100—and the oldest is still 114. For reasons that aren't entirely clear, Young says, the odds of a person dying in any given year between the ages of 110 and 113 appear to be about one in two. But by age 114, the chances jump to more like two in three.

It's still possible that the barrier will eventually go the way of the four-minute mile. Steve Austad, a former lion tamer who is now a professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center, argues the apparent spike in mortality at age 114 is merely a statistical artifact. Today's oldest humans, he's reminds us, grew up without the benefit of 20th-century advances in nutrition and medicine. In 2000, he bet fellow gerontologist S. Jay Olshansky $500 million that someone born that year, somewhere in the world, would live to be 150. Olshansky, an Illinois at Chicago professor who wrote about the paradox of longevity for Slate last fall, doesn't expect to be around in 2150 to collect his winnings. Even a cure for cancer or heart disease would do little to extend the maximum length of human life, he argues, because there are simply too many risk factors that pile up by the time a person is 115 years old. He believes super-centenarians owe their longevity more to freakish genes than perfect health; the 122-year-old Calment smoked cigarettes for 96 years. Olshansky and Austad agree on one point: A technological breakthrough, perhaps in the realm of genetics, that slows the aging process could send life spans surging upward.

Is such a discovery imminent? At this point, the question is little more than a Rorschach. Young, the Guinness World Records consultant, compares the quest for super-longevity to the efforts of alchemists in the Middle Ages to turn lead into gold. They were right to think it was possible, but wrong to imagine they had any idea where to begin: Scientists finally succeeded in transmuting elements in the 20th century only after first unlocking nuclear physics. By that time, alchemy was largely irrelevant; the real trick was splitting uranium atoms.

The same may be true of enabling humans to live to 150. Age, it's worth remembering, is more than just a number. Young, who has spent time with dozens of super-centenarians, says even the hardiest humans turn frail by 110. As for Besse Cooper, the new world titleholder, Young reports that she can still talk, though her eyesight is failing. "As a quality-of-life issue, I think she could handle another year. I've seen some that, bless their hearts, probably shouldn't be here anymore."

Aging is a process--the ability to remove cellular waste before it accumulates to the point beyond removal. When cellular waste backs up, it causes what we know as signs of aging: wrinkles, inflammation, skin spots, eye problems, tooth loss, organ damage and/or failure, inability to fight off infections and viruses, etc. This is the vulnerability on man's design--up to now, there is no sure-fire publicly-available method of rectifying this--sure, there are tons of bio-gerontologists with tons of ideas on how to circumvent this process, and all kinds of stuff going on in labs, but none have so far progressed into the actual product phase. Circumventing ONE process leads to problems in other processes, it seems.

What can YOU do about it yourself? Stop creating cellular waste in the first place by eating mostly raw, nutritious, non-starchy foods, only drinking water, and keeping total calorie intake low. This may slow down your aging process, but it won't stop it completely...and it won't prevent you from getting hit by a bus next week, ending ALL processes! You might not make it to 100, but you'll live long enough to start collecting Social Security at 70 instead of 62 or 65.

Imagine if we all lived to be 150 as a matter of course. We'd have a larger over-population problem than we do right now, and that would cause even more world-poisoning than we do right now in the pursuit of more--more food, more fuel, more money, more technology, etc. On the plus side, there'd probably be fewer kids. Fewer UNWANTED kids for parents to stuff with low-grade food, shuttle off to low-grade schools, then either turn loose on society or shove into low-grade colleges, only to do low-grade work with that degree, and eventually repeating the low-grade lifestyle they grew up with, teaching it to their kids, and so on.

Living longer means the expected retirement entitlement benefits age could be raised well beyond the mere 67 or 70 we have today--it could go all the way up to 125 or higher. Gerontology and the bio-sciences would be the hot career trends. Whole new markets would be opened up geared toward these old-but-young people, and we aren't just talking about home care, medical equipment and supplies sent to your home, or reverse mortgages--we're talking the 50-year mortgage, the 10-year degree program, the 20-year smart phone contract, and cars that will last 30 years without major maintenance before a new one is "needed", and then there'd be the rock-climbing expeditions, white-water canoe classes, cross-country ski trips, and all the activities today's seniors can only dream of doing, because of failing organs, damaged joints, or taking Coumadin. Or, they could work longer, saving more for their eventual retirement, and continuing to contribute to the tax base along the way.

The downside? Political terms could theoretically be extended (with Constitutional amendment) to 10 years, 15 years, or even longer. Or conversely, political positions would be kept the same length they are now, but politics would no longer be a career, but a temporary bump on the road to a long, glorious, and productive life outside of office (like it was originally meant to be)--kind of like jury duty.