• Question: If the human body was completely rid of disease, imune to war, and had unlimited water/food/medicine, how long could we potentially live for?

    Asked by sammieblues to David, Luna, Mark, Melanie, Probash on 22 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: David Pyle

      David Pyle answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      I don’t know – but I don’t imagine that it’s much more than a decade or two longer than we live (on average) at the moment. I’m also not sure that society would be ready for the consequences of a very old population.

    • Photo: Melanie Stefan

      Melanie Stefan answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      That would depend on how you define disease. Is ageing in itself a disease? Exhaustion? Cell damage? It’s very hard to define these things. If we didn’t age or get sick (and what about accidents? would we have accidents), we could possibly live for long enough to insult everybody in the universe in alphabetical order.

    • Photo: Luna Munoz

      Luna Munoz answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      Living past 100 seems probable but not to 200 years. There was an interesting interview with a scientist from Massachusetts Insitute of Technology in the US.

    • Photo: Probash Chowdhury

      Probash Chowdhury answered on 22 Mar 2011:

      The cells in the body are programmed to die after a certain period of time (apoptosis) – they are dying throughout our lives. However, many more cells are made to replace them. This process can continue if cell division is not interrupted or apoptosis is not prevented. The body and cells could probably live for longer, but the cells get tired after many cell divisions and mistakes can happen during cell division, mistakes in the DNA or cell structure. The immune cells would normally kill off these damaged cells, but if the immune system is also affected, it wouldn’t remove them so well. This is also partly why organs reaches a certain size and stops growing.

      Scientists believe that DNA segments containing the instructions to cause apoptosis also contain a count of how many apoptosis cycles are completed. When that total is reached the cells around it will not divide any further. Therefore, the body then dies. So I don’t think the body could naturally live for ever.

Comments