Forget the fountain of youth.
Tech titan, cryptocurrency boss, AI researchers, investors and so-called “immortality advocates” support “escape velocity for longevity.” Controversial theory By extending remaining life spans faster than time can pass, people would be able to live indefinitely.
“But that doesn’t guarantee you’ll live forever,” says computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil explained in March“You might have a 10-year-old child and calculate that he or she can live for decades, but they could die tomorrow.”
Kurzweil, 76, argues that medical research, particularly vaccine development, is advancing so rapidly that it could add about four months to our lifespan every year. Advances in technology such as self-driving cars will also help reduce accidents and fatalities, he argues.
Former Google engineer predicts people will live one year longer by 2029.
“After 2029, you go back more than a year. You go back in time,” Kurzweil continued during a conversation with venture capital and private equity firm Bessemer Venture Partners. “If you can go back at least a year, you’ll have reached longevity escape velocity.”
This term is not newbut last year Dublin Longevity DeclarationAs part of the pledge, leading longevity researchers called on world leaders to immediately expand research to extend healthspan and life expectancy.
“We wanted to get this out there because everyone knows aging is bad, everyone says it’s bad, but no one does anything about it,” gerontologist Aubrey de Grey, president and chief scientific officer of the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation, which aims to prevent age-related diseases, said in an October statement.
“Just like with bad weather, people have this assumption that there’s nothing they can do even if they try, and we wanted to shake that assumption away,” de Grey added.
Life expectancy in the United States is slowly beginning to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall U.S. life expectancy at birth has increased from 76.4 years in 2021 to 77.5 years in 2022.
Still, the increase was not enough to make up for the 2.4-year loss from 2019 to 2021.
Heart disease, cancer, accidental injuries, and COVID-19 Leading causes of death in the United States.
It’s rare for an American to reach the age of 110 and become an ultra-longevity individual. Houston woman Elizabeth Francis, 114, is the oldest living person in the United States.
Dr. Thomas Perls, founder and director of the New England Centenarian Study, which studies the lifestyle and genetic factors that lead to longevity, said the focus should be on fighting age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s, rather than striving for eternal life.
“We want to do what we can to slow down or avoid age-related diseases that could potentially extend people’s life expectancy or life span a little bit.” Perls told Insider last year..
“But I definitely don’t think that translates into the idea of living forever,” he added.
