Life expectancy is the average number of years a person is expected to live.
The human life expectancy has been increasing over the past years. Available data indicate that life expectancy has nearly doubled during the last 100 years. Although there is no disagreement with these facts, there is a raging debate as to whether the increase will continue or it will reach a limit. The aim of this paper is to argue as to whether the life expectancy has reached a limit or it is yet to be reached.
Studies have indicated that there are no natural limits to life expectancy. According to a report by BBC reporter Morelle, a scientist Dr Aubrey de Grey (the University of Cambridge) claims that life can be increased by more than 1,000 years. The argument has been extensively discussed in various circles. According to Dr de Grey, there are various strategies, SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) that can be used to make life last longer and to prevent ageing. The argument is that through SENS, human’s molecular and cellular damage can be cured and thus prevent age-related illnesses as well as becoming frail.
SENS’s aim is to fight the possible damage to cells including chromosomes, DNA or cell loss. Dr. de Grey argues that if the abovementioned problems can be fixed, then the sky is the only limit for life expectancy (Morelle). However, this argument contradicts an earlier statement made by a researcher James Fries. In the 1980s, Fries claimed that human beings have a limited life expectancy. To be specific, Fries put forth the assumption that the average life expectancy is limited to 85 years with a deviation of 7 years.
Nevertheless, this argument did not take in to consideration that the fact that in the last decade the life expectancy has been on the increase (Onlinemedicinetips). All in all, predicting life expectancy seems to be a very contradictive task that needs to be dealt with soberly. So far, the limit to human expectancy has not been determined. The tendency of the life expectancy to increase has been going on and it is not exactly known whether this will continue in the future. We therefore leave it to scientists to determine whether this trend will continue or reach a limit in the future.
