Illustration: a special enzyme encircles the double helix to repair a broken strand of DNA. (Tom Ellenberger, Washington University School of Medicine/NIGMS Image Gallery)
In the 1900s the average life expectancy in the western world was 47 years old. Today it's nearly 80 years old, and in the future, we're set to live even longer.
David Ewing Duncan is a science journalist and the author of "When I’m 164." He asked over 30,000 people: "how long do you want to live?"
There were three options:
A) 80 years, the current average western life span.
B) 120 years, close to the maximum anyone has lived, and
C) 150 years.
Sixty percent of those surveyed settled for 80, with 30 percent opting for 120.
While it seems we don’t want to live much longer than we do now, advanced aging is looking more and more like a reality. With improved hygiene, nutrition and medical advances, the United Nations predicts that within the next century, it could be pretty normal to live to 100 years old.
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The show is a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in collaboration with New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston.
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Comments [5]
Live for 150 years? Not if I look like 75 year old for half that time.
Platforms are presumably about the specific issues, for example pro-choice or anti-choice. I suggest a different strategy. Let's focus on the PROCESS of deciding on policy. I suggest we use reason, as our founding fathers did, to decide policy. My party of one is called the Reason Party.
Personally I would like to live forever, so long as that life isn't a burden. But if I had to specify a time I would say 144. That way I would not only be able to say that I lived through three centuries 20th, 21st and 22nd but to also see how that century is likely to turn out.
I write everyday in the hopes that I will live forever...
Despite the fact that I am unknown, I see my writing as a message in a bottle that one day will be opened.
My fantasy is that one day, my kids will find all my comments that I write on The Takeaway as well as my blogs, and stories. They will read it and learn things about me that they didn't already know and it will live within them, and they will pass on my experiences.
Sadly, that really does mean something for me and keeps me excited and upbeat.
I don't care how old I am when I die. I die when I can't think and write creatively. I am so boring.
As Jesus revealed, man is made immortal, he does live forever. But not forever in this world.
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