Can people live up to 200 years old?

When Gertrude Weaver, 116, died of pneumonia last week in the state of Arkansas, USA, she held the title of the world's longest living person for only five days. When she died, Weaver was still younger than the French grandmother Jeanne Calment, 122, who left the world in 1979 and still holds the longest life record in human history.

Limitation of human life expectancy

Are genes the key to helping people like Mrs. Weaver and Mrs. Calment live longer than most of us? With new types of drugs and advances in science and technology, can we loosen the limits of human life to 130, or even 200 years old?

Futurists like Aubrey DeGrey argue that eliminating just a few diseases and finding new ways to fight aging can help bring life expectancy to 1,000 years old. Dr. DeGrey founded the company to develop his ideas about rejuvenation and longevity and this business seems to be making it happen.

Joon Yun, a California venture capital fund manager, proposed a $ 1 million " Palo Alto Lifetime Award " to promote research on the 50% extension of the life of laboratory mice. Up to now, 15 research groups have registered to participate in this competition.

In 2014, Google announced a subsidiary of the company, called Calico, will study interventions to slow aging and combat aging-related diseases . Meanwhile, Craig Ventner, a former human genome researcher, founded a new company called Human Longevity Inc. to look at databases of "super-life" people like Mrs. Weaver and try to find genetic code that helps us live longer.

However, other scientists insist, no matter how much money is spent, we cannot help the human body exceed its limits. They believe that good habits and lifestyles can prolong life, but cannot completely change our natural lifespan.

" Should we change the goal of bringing a few people to 130 years or setting a more achievable goal than helping more people stay healthy in most of their lives?" , Thomas Perls, professor of geriatrics from Boston University School of Medicine (USA), said.

Mr. Perls is currently the director of a study of people over 100 years old at Boston Medical Center. He and his colleagues are looking at the genes of people who live more than 100 years old and "super-life" people, who live more than 110 years old. He revealed that many genes could hold the key to fighting aging-related diseases , but the main problem has not been resolved.

"We must understand why these people (aging) are much slower than the rest of us ," Perls said.