A few years ago, I wrote a memorable and quite controversial story about Jeanne Calment, who was then – and remains now – the official holder of the world longevity record. She was born in 1875 and died in 1997, aged 122 years and 164 days. At least that’s the official version of events.
According to some doubters, the woman who died as Jeanne Calment was actually her daughter Yvonne, who fraudulently assumed her mother’s identity when Jeanne died in 1934. Yvonne was 23 years Jeanne’s junior. Still a good innings, but not a record-breaking one.
The matter remains unresolved, and so, for now, Calment remains one of the most important data points in biogerontology. When we ask, “how long can a person live?”, the answer is “at least 122 years and 164 days” – assuming Jeanne Calment really did live that long. Whether a person could live longer has long troubled scientists.
It’s an important question in biogerontology because, if we want to achieve life extension, we need to know what we’re aiming for. But it’s surprisingly hard to answer. Calment is an outlier: nobody else has reached 120, which is one reason for the suspicion.
The second-longest-lived person was Kane Tanaka, who racked up 119 years and 107 days, and the oldest person today has just turned 117. Aside from a few mavericks, however, everyone agrees that there is a natural limit. There are two main ways of tackling this question.
One is by studying demographic data on verified supercentenarians. One such frequently cited analysis produced an estimate of roughly 115, but did not rule out somebody living to 125. Another concluded that Calment’s record is likely to be broken fairly soon.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
