Health: You Should Live So Long

Human life-span, despite medical advances, has an upper limit

Most everybody wants to live as long as possible. And given the enormous strides made in medicine and the health sciences during the past 150 years, people could be forgiven for hoping that someday human beings will live, if not quite forever, at least far longer than at present. Since the mid-19th century, average life expectancy at birth has nearly doubled: from 40 years to 75. Today many people live past 100, and the oldest individuals have reached either 115 or 120, depending on whom you believe.

So it comes as something of a jolt to be told by the experts...

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