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Asked by scibtings123 to Ed, Hayley, Jason, Nathan, Sophie on 12 Mar 2013.
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Edward Bovill answered on 12 Mar 2013:
The oldest living person is Jiroemon Kimura from Japan and he’s 115 years old. The oldest person who has ever lived was 122 years old when she passed away in France in 1875.
There is a genetic reason that people cannot live forever. As you’ll have noticed, as we get older our bodies slowly start to break down. This is because our cells are constantly copying and replacing themselves as they die and get worn out. Unfortunately, cells can only copy themselves a set number of times before they die, which sets a maximum age that a human body can live for (this is different for every person and depends on your lifestyle).
There are scientists who believe that in a few decades time there will be genetic treatments that will be able to ‘reset’ the cells and increase the number of times they can copy themselves. This would mean that you could regenerate someone in their 60s and make them appear as if they were 20 again. While this is still very much science fiction there are some scientists who believe that there are already children who have been born today who could, theoretically, live forever if these treatments are developed in time.
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Hayley Evers-King answered on 12 Mar 2013:
The longest life recorded so far (officially) is 115 years, though one person is still living at that age currently, so it may go up. Scientists have thought a lot about what the limit might be for age – considering life spans have got longer and longer with medical advances. But it does seem that there is some sort of limit imposed by our genetics, which break down and stop working as well as we get older (this is why we get wrinkles, sore joints and other signs of aging), but some scientists think we might be able to turn this process off, then who knows, if we can solve other diseases (like cancer and heart disease) maybe we could live a lot longer.
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