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Longevity and Medicine

How modern medical practitioners define death and how death can be otherwise understood should stand in contrast by now. Other ways of understanding death are explained by religion, spirituality, and philosophy, which may or may not be in agreement with the above interpretation of death. But longevity medicine is that practice which aims to re-define death as a cellular process (as discussed above) and to postpone death by increasing life-expectancy within an increased life-span. Failing longevity techniques, the aim is to preserve the structure of a person for possible future treatment.

The life-span of human beings has never been documented to last longer than that of Jean Calment (a "supercentenarian") who lived until she was 122 years old. The life-span is the limit of longevity for the species, though this limit has changed over the course of biological evolution. Human life-span has increased from being similar to the life-span of primates (the longest being those of Orangutans, Chimpanzees, and Gorillas who live to be around 50 years in captivity; Rowe, 1996), to the modern maximum human life-span of 122 years. Life-expectancy is a measure of the probable amount of time an individual has to live within the human life-span. Cultural improvements have resulted in more people reaching an older age; some reaching or slightly surpassing (and thus re-defining) the limits of the known life-span itself. Life-expectancy can change by years or decades according to many interacting variables like: geographic location, environmental circumstances, race, gender, or occupation. Nevertheless, it is likely (as it has been with most 20th century Western generations) that we will live to see a future where today's average Western life-expectancy of around 75 years increases. Compared to 1901, when life-expectancy in the West was around 50 years, people are generally living longer lives now by an extra 25 years. Compared to 10,000 years ago, our life-expectancy is on average around twice as long. These improvements in life expectancy are due to cultural advances that have decreased infant mortality rates and improved conditions of hygiene, diet, and healing.

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