Raiany Romanni in Palladium:
Twentieth-century science doubled the life expectancy of Homo sapiens, but our health still declines at nearly the same age today as it did in 300 BC. We’ve learned to keep chronically ill adults alive, and made some welcome progress in maintaining health. But in 2024, we’re about as likely to develop the diseases of aging—like cancers—if we live to age 60 as we were in the Iron Age. We’ve never actually extended the human lifespan. The oldest person to have ever lived (to an alleged 122) was born in 1875 and never saw the 21st century.
Yet attempts to increase health and lifespan have been successful in nearly every animal studied so far. In a 1993 study, changing just one gene (daf-2, a pathway humans share) in C. Elegans worms doubled their lifespan. Changing one additional gene (rsks-1) resulted in a five-fold lifespan increase—the equivalent of a 400-year-old human.
More here.