Have We Reached Peak Human Life Span?
人类有可能活到150岁吗？
DANA G. SMITH
2024年10月10日
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Have We Reached Peak Human Life Span?
人类有可能活到150岁吗？
DANA G. SMITH
2024年10月10日
The oldest human on record, Jeanne Calment of France, lived to the age of 122. What are the odds that the rest of us get there, too?
有记录以来最长寿的人类——法国的珍妮·卡尔芒，活到了122岁。我们这些人有多大几率活到这个年纪？
Not high, barring a transformative medical breakthrough, according to research published Monday in the journal Nature Aging.
根据周一发表在《自然衰老》(Nature Aging)杂志上的一项研究，除非出现变革性的医学突破，否则机会不高。
The study looked at data on life expectancy at birth collected between 1990 and 2019 from some of the places where people typically live the longest: Australia, France, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Data from the United States was also included, though the country’s life expectancy is lower.
该研究调查了1990年至2019年期间从澳大利亚、法国、意大利、香港、日本、韩国、西班牙、瑞典和瑞士等通常最长寿的地方收集的出生时预期寿命数据。来自美国的数据也包括在内，尽管美国人的预期寿命较低。
The researchers found that while average life expectancies increased during that time in all of the locations, the rates at which they rose slowed down. The one exception was Hong Kong, where life expectancy did not decelerate.
研究人员发现，虽然在这段时间里，所有地区的平均预期寿命都有所增加，但增长的速度有所放缓。唯一的例外是香港，那里的预期寿命上升没有减速。
The data suggests that after decades of life expectancy marching upward thanks to medical and technological advancements, humans could be closing in on the limits of what’s possible for average life span.
由于医疗和技术的进步，人类的预期寿命已经延长了几十年，数据表明，现在人类可能正在接近平均寿命的极限。
“We’re basically suggesting that as long as we live now is about as long as we’re going to live,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois Chicago, who led the study. He predicted maximum life expectancy will end up around 87 years — approximately 84 for men, and 90 for women — an average age that several countries are already close to achieving.
“我们基本上是在说，现在能活多久，今后也就能活多久，”领导这项研究的伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校流行病学和生物统计学教授S·杰伊·奥尔尚斯基说。他预测，人类的最高预期寿命将在87岁左右——男性约为84岁，女性约为90岁——有几个国家已经接近达到这个平均值。
During the 20th century, life expectancy rose dramatically, spurred on by innovations like water sanitation and antibiotics. Some scientists have projected that this pace will hold as better treatments and preventions are discovered for cancer, heart disease and other common causes of death. The famous demographer James Vaupel maintained that most children born in the 21st century would live to 100.
20世纪，在用水卫生和抗生素等创新的推动下，预期寿命大幅上升。一些科学家预测，随着癌症、心脏病和其他常见死因的更好治疗及预防方法被发现，这一速度将保持下去。著名人口统计学家詹姆斯·沃佩尔认为，21世纪出生的大多数孩子将活到100岁。
But according to the new study, that is unlikely to be the case. The researchers found that instead of a higher percentage of people making it to 100 in the places they analyzed, the ages at which people are dying have been compressed into a narrower time frame.
但根据这项新研究，情况不太可能是这样。研究人员发现，在他们分析的地方，活到100岁的人的比例并没有提高，人们的死亡年龄被压缩到一个更窄的时间范围内。
Dr. Olshansky has long pushed against the idea that life expectancy will steadily climb forever. In a 1990 paper published in Science, he presented a theory that humans were already close to reaching the limit for average life expectancy.
奥尔尚斯基长期以来一直反对预期寿命将永远稳步攀升的观点。在1990年发表在《科学》杂志上的论文中，他提出了一个理论，即人类已经接近平均预期寿命的极限。
More than 30 years later, he said his new study offers hard data to back up his original hypothesis — a claim even those who have bet against him say has merit.
30多年后，他说他的新研究提供了确凿的数据来支持他最初的假设——即使是那些与他打赌的人也认为不无道理。
Steven Austad, a professor of biology at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, who has a wager with Dr. Olshansky that a human alive today will reach 150, said the paper was “excellent” and “establishes beyond doubt” that increases in life expectancy have slowed.
阿拉巴马大学伯明翰分校的生物学教授史蒂文·奥斯塔德曾与奥尔尚斯基打赌，认为今天活着的人可以活到150岁。如今，奥斯塔德说，奥尔尚斯基的论文“非常出色”，“毫无疑问地证明”预期寿命的增长已经放缓。
Jan Vijg a professor of genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, who has also researched the limits of human life span, agreed, saying that Dr. Olshansky’s study was “well done.”
纽约市阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦医学院的遗传学教授扬·维吉也研究过人类寿命的极限，他对此表示赞同，称奥尔尚斯基的研究“做得很好”。
“He has always been what people considered pessimistic, but I think it’s also realistic,” Dr. Vijg said.
“他一直是人们认为的悲观主义者，但我认为这也是现实的，”维吉说。
The new research suggests that while modern medicine has helped more people regularly live to their 70s, 80s and 90s, getting the average age up beyond that will prove difficult. For example, the scientists calculated that even if all deaths before the age of 50 were eliminated, average peak life expectancy would only rise by one year for women and one and a half years for men.
新的研究表明，虽然现代医学帮助更多的人把活到70岁、80岁和90岁变成了司空见惯的事，但要让平均年龄超过这一年龄将是困难的。例如，科学家们计算出，即使消除了所有50岁之前的死亡，女性的平均预期寿命峰值也只会增加一年，男性只会增加一年半。
“We can manufacture a bit more survival time through medical advances,” as well as through reducing health disparities and encouraging healthier lifestyles, Dr. Olshansky said.
“我们可以通过医学进步，”以及缩小健康差距和鼓励更健康的生活方式，来延长一些生存时间，奥尔尚斯基说。
But, he added, even if deaths from common diseases or accidents were eliminated, people would die of aging itself. “We still have declining function of internal organs and organ systems that make it virtually impossible for these bodies to live a whole lot longer than they do now,” Dr. Olshansky said.
但是，他还说，即使消除了常见疾病或事故造成的死亡，人们还是会死于衰老本身。“我们的内部器官和器官系统的功能仍然在下降，这使得这些身体实际上不可能比现在活得更久，”奥尔尚斯基说。
Not everyone agrees. Dr. Luigi Ferrucci, the scientific director at the National Institute on Aging, concurred that we are unlikely to see substantial increases in life span if the status quo is maintained. But he said that investing more in preventive health could change that by delaying the onset of diseases, which in turn could result in “less of that damage that was due to the biology of aging.”
并非所有人都同意这个观点。国家老龄化研究所的科学主任路易吉·费鲁奇博士也认为，如果维持现状，我们不太可能看到寿命大幅延长。但他表示，加大对预防性健康的投资，可以通过推迟疾病的发作来改变这种状况，从而“减少生物学上衰老造成的损害”。
Nadine Ouellette, an associate professor of demography at the University of Montreal, took issue with another aspect of the study. She said that average life expectancy can “sometimes be misleading” since it is shaped so much by deaths early in life. Instead, she recommended looking at the age at which most people die, called the modal age of death, which focuses more on late life.
蒙特利尔大学人口学副教授纳丁·乌莱特对这项研究的另一方面提出了质疑。她说，平均预期寿命“有时会产生误导”，因为它在很大程度上受到生命早期死亡的影响。相反，她建议关注大多数人死亡的年龄，即所谓的模态死亡年龄，它更侧重晚年生活。
For Dr. Olshansky, the only thing that might radically lengthen life expectancy is if scientists develop an intervention to slow the aging process itself — something he’s “optimistic” about, he said.
奥尔尚斯基认为，唯一可能从根本上延长预期寿命的方法是科学家们开发出一种干预措施来延缓衰老过程本身——他对此表示“乐观”。
Dr. Austad is also a believer in the potential of anti-aging medicine. And he said that the new paper doesn’t change his bet that a human alive today will reach 150, because it has always been based on “a breakthrough in targeting the aging process itself.”
奥斯塔德也相信抗衰老医学的潜力。他说，这篇新论文并没有改变他对今天还活着的人将活到150岁的赌注，因为他的赌注一直都是建立在“针对衰老过程本身的突破”之上的。
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