• Question: Will we ever be able to know when we will die?

    Asked by anon-33875 to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 21 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Robert Woolfson

      Robert Woolfson answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      This comes down to what happens when we die. This is one of the great mysteries of life and so to the best of my knowledge the answer is no.

    • Photo: Sam Geen

      Sam Geen answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      Life insurance companies can predict when people will die, on average – they know how likely they are to have accidents, have medical problems, etc. But they can’t tell you exactly when you will die, if you have an accident, say. Instead, they use statistics to calculate when people on average die, and for a large group of people they can predict roughly how many people will die when.

    • Photo: Matthew Pankhurst

      Matthew Pankhurst answered on 22 Jun 2013:

      I think a personal “death clock” is a while off, but all the time we are getting better ideas about our health and when we will likely die. I say “likely” because it’s all based on statistics, that look at overall information rather than anything specific to you. Also, this doesn’t include accidental death (which is like being in a car crash or something), although far more people die from natural causes (old age) than by disease or accidents.
      Who knows, maybe you will help discover how to predict someones age when they die far more on a case-by-case basis. We understand our genetics (DNA) better every day, so maybe we will be able to track how our personal DNA gets degraded the more times it is copied (this is why our bodies change in old age), and this could lead to a personal “times up!”

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