An Update on the Austad and Olshansky Wager on Future Life Expectancy
Since it doesn't get much press these days, newcomers to our longevity science community might not be aware of the wager made nearly two decades ago between optimist Steven Austad and pessimist S. Jay Olshansky on the trajectory of future human life expectancy. The core of the wager is whether or not the research and medical communities will develop and implement means of radical life extension sufficient to result in 150-year old humans within next century or so. Given where things stand today, I'd say that betting against this outcome is tough to justify. Fifty years in technology is a very long time in this era of rapid progress in applied science, never mind a century, and the first rejuvenation therapies that work by removing a fundamental cause of aging are already heading to the clinic.
It is possible that someone reading this now will be alive to see the resolution of a $1 billion bet between Jay Olshansky, a University of Illinois at Chicago professor of public health, and Steven Austad, chairman of biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Eighteen years ago, the two friends began their discussion on an issue that long has intrigued scientists and laymen alike: What is the limit of the human life span? Austad, whose research focuses on aging, had made a bold prediction at an academic conference: In the year 2150, he said, there will be a 150-year-old human being. Olshansky, also an expert on aging, wasn't having it.
They decided to make it interesting. They each put $150 into an investment fund, and signed a contract specifying that the heirs of the winner will cash it out in 2150. Early published reports on the wager said the payoff would be from $200 million to $500 million given good market returns, but the men have since doubled their initial investments and they now estimate the final jackpot at roughly $1 billion.
Since they made wager in 2000, average human life spans have inched up. I asked Olshansky if, in light of the galloping progress of medicine on all fronts, he was having any second thoughts about his position. None, he said. If anything he's more certain than ever that his descendants - he has one grandchild so far - will be made fabulously wealthy. "There will certainly be breakthroughs that will slow many of the biological processes of aging. We'll be able to extend the number of years that people can live in good health but the brain is our Achilles heel. There's still no evidence to suggest that we'll be able to halt the effects of the daily loss of nonreplicating neurons, much less reverse it. We can replace hips, knees, hearts and so on, but we can't replace the brain."
Austad, too, believes more firmly than ever in his position. "We're discovering more and more ways every year to make mice live longer through drugs and diet. A 150-year-old person is only about 20 percent older than the current record holder, and we've found dozens of ways to extend the lives of mice by that much. Not all of them will work with humans, of course, but if any of them do, we're going to see dramatic results. All we have to do in the next 30 years is find drugs that dramatically slow the underlying causes of aging. If we give them to people approaching 50, some are going to reach the extreme of 150."
If we trust the study that says the humans don't increase the mortality after the age of 95-105 all it takes is just a few improvements.
Let's say that in 100 years , due to simple improvement of the living standards, we will have about 1 billion centenarians. With no other improvement, as of today they would have a half-live of one year (probably of dying each year is ~ 50%). So in 30 years/halving we would have only one survivor. I am quite sure that with a dedicated medical help (say a team of doctors assigned to monitor the person 24/7) even today we could reduce that chance somehow. If it gets reduced in half, then there will be one survivor in 60 years.
On another hand if we happen to have 8B centenarians we have 3 more half-lives.
Or if we have 1B supercentenarians at the age of 120, then even today one of them could reach 150...
Of course, we go to uncharted territory. The life span hasn't budged above 130 y for the last century, so we have no trend to extrapolate. we can extrapolate the life expectancy and probably we will go to 110 in 100 years if we go at this rate using only mitigation approaches.
But once we have an effective rejuvenation or damage repair then all bets are off...
"we can't replace the brain", -- we can grow and transplant new neurons. Someone, show him this research -- https://tmrwedition.com/2018/02/25/interview-with-tissue-engineering-and-regenerative-medicine-expert-prof-tal-dvir Really, how people like him can be so ignorant of regenerative medicine ? They constantly whine "how much we don't know to cure ageing!" -- however, personally do nothing to change the picture!