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Experts in the News: Jay Olshanksy and Jan Vijg on “limits” to human longevity in Gizmodo

A June 28, 2017 story in Gizmodo spotlighted the continued discussion over “limits” to human longevity, sparked by a study published in Nature journal in fall 2016 by AFAR 2012 Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction winner, Jan Vijg, PhD.

Dr. Vijg’s research suggested although human life expectancy has risen fairly steadily and rapidly over the past 150 years, maximum lifespan--the age reached by the longest-lived individual--may have reached its upper limits.

Gizmodo also chronicles rebuttals to this study in the Nature's June 29 issue, including responses by AFAR Board member S. Jay Olshansky, who also commented on Vijg’s research in The New York Times last fall.

However, Vijg tells Gizmodo, that the original study “didn’t mean for it to sound like there was an absolute limit to human longevity, but rather that we’d reached a limit that advancements in his own field, the genetics of aging, or medicine might eventually surpass.”

Vijg stresses: “The real important thing is we need to put more money into drugs and interventions that really work against aging—no longer [just] against individual diseases.”

Although access to Nature is by subscription only, the full Gizmodo article can be read here.


Jan Vijg, PhD, is the Lola and Saul Kramer Chair in Molecular Genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

S. Jay Olshansky, PhD, is a Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Research Associate at the Center on Aging at the University of Chicago and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.


For expert-edited insights on Longevity, download our InfoAging Guide to Longevity here.

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