We‘ll live to be a thousand, scientist claims
It‘s a milestone that few, if any, of us expect to reach. But the first person who will live to see their 150th birthday has already been born.
Even more incredibly, Aubrey De Grey believes that the first person to live for 1,000 years will be born in the next two decades.
The biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research claims that within his own lifetime doctors will have all the tools they need to “cure” ageing.
This will be done, he believes, by banishing all diseases and extending life indefinitely.
Dr De Grey said: “I‘d say we have a 50/50 chance of bringing ageing under what I‘d call a decisive level of medical control within the next 25 years or so. And what I mean by decisive is the same sort of medical control that we have over most infectious diseases today.”
Dr De Grey sees a time when people will go to their doctors for regular “maintenance”, which by then will include gene therapies, stem cell therapies, immune stimulation and a range of other advanced medical techniques to keep them in good shape.
He is the chief scientific officer of the non-profit California-based SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Foundation.
Dr De Grey describes aging as the life-long accumulation of various types of molecular and cellular damage throughout the body.
“The idea is to engage in what you might call preventative geriatrics, where you go in to periodically repair that molecular and cellular damage before it gets to the level of abundance that is pathogenic,” he said.
Exactly how far and how fast life expectancy will increase in the future is a subject of some debate, but the trend is clear.
An average of three months is being added to life expectancy every year at the moment and experts estimate there could be a million centenarians across the world by 2030.
To date, the world‘s longest-living person on record lived to 122 and in Japan alone there were more than 44,000 centenarians in 2010.
据英国《每日邮报》7月5日报道：这是极少人能够梦想达到的一个里程碑。然而第一位能过上150岁生日的人确实已经诞生了。
更让人不可思议的是，奥布里•德格雷认为第一位能活1000岁的人可能在未来20年内就会出世。
作为一名老年生物医学专家及一所长寿研究基金会的首席科学家，德格雷称在自己有生之年，医学界就可能掌握一切所需工具来“治疗”衰老。
德格雷相信，通过驱逐伴随衰老而生的各种疾病，就可以无限期地延长生命。
德格雷说：“我认为在未来大约25年内，我们就有50%的几率将衰老降至医疗手段可控的关键水平。所谓关键性水平是指和我们当今对大多数传染病的医疗控制程度一样。”
德格雷认为未来会有一天，人们会找医生做定期“保养”，使用包括基因疗法、干细胞疗法、免疫刺激在内的一系列先进医疗技术，以维持良好的健康状况。
德格雷是美国加州非盈利组织“人工可忽略衰老策略”（SENS）基金会的首席科学官。
他把衰老形容为人体各处多种分子与细胞损伤的终生累积过程。
“我们的理念可称作预防性老年病学，让人们定期去修复体内的分子与细胞损伤，以免其累积过多而致病”，德格雷解释说。
未来人类寿命确切能延长到什么长度，多久能实现一直是讨论的主题，但这一趋势已经很明显。
目前世界人均寿命每年平均延长3个月，而专家预计，到2030年，全球百岁老人将达到100万。
迄今为止，记录在册的全球最长寿老人的年龄为122岁，而2010年仅在日本，就有超过44，000位老人活过了100岁。
