For as long as humans have been aware of their mortality, the question of whether a limit exists to the maximum age we can reach has followed. Attempts to reach this ceiling have attracted a wave of pseudoscience, from injecting the blood of younger people to tests that can tell one's "true age." It seems many people want to reach or exceed the age of Jeanne Calment, the oldest verified living person who died at 122 years, 164 days or Maria Branyas, recently the world’s oldest living person, who died in August in a Spanish nursing home aged 117.

Longevity researchers have been arguing about this question for decades, and a new study published this week reignites this fiery debate among researchers about whether humans will continue to live longer forever or some day reach a lifespan ceiling.

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In the past century, average life expectancy has doubled from 32 years in 1900 to 71 years in 2021, according to Our World in Data. Advancements in medicine and technology allowed us to live longer and longer, and the global lifespan among high-income countries has continued to steadily increase until the present day by about three years per decade throughout much of the 20th Century.

However, a new study published this week in Nature Aging says that this upward trend is curbing and boldly states that “humanity’s battle for a long life has largely been accomplished.” Using data from eight wealthy countries with the highest life-expectancies plus the U.S. and Hong Kong, researchers reported that increases in life expectancy slowed between 1990 to 2019. (The authors did not include more recent years to avoid conflating the data with deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which reduced life expectancies.)

"People are getting older and dying of things they didn’t die from 30 years ago or 40 years ago."

"Our........

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