RIP Maria de Jesus

[VAdame]

Worlds' (formerly!) Oldest Person, aged 115, in Portugal.

That seems to be sort of a self-limiting job, doesn't it.

American Gertrude Baines takes over now.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090102/ts ... demography

[Bob78164]

So it looks like we have maybe six or seven more years before we run out of people who were born in the 19th century. --Bob

[silverscreenselect]

It's funny that you never hear about the second oldest person in the world dying.

It's also weird that the oldest person almost always dies at 115 or 116. No one ever gets to 118 or 120. Is there some sort of absolute self-limiting factor at that age?

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

It's funny that you never hear about the second oldest person in the world dying.

It's also weird that the oldest person almost always dies at 115 or 116. No one ever gets to 118 or 120. Is there some sort of absolute self-limiting factor at that age?

Jeanne Louise Calment 21 February 1875 – 4 August 1997)[1] was a French woman with the longest confirmed lifespan in history at age 122 years 164 days (44,724 days in total).[2] She lived in Arles, France, for her entire life, and outlived both her daughter and grandson. Because her husband was wealthy, she never worked, instead living a comfortable lifestyle. She became well-known from the age of 113, when the centenary of Vincent van Gogh brought reporters to Arles, as she was the last person living to have met the artist. She entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1988, and in 1993 was declared the oldest person who had ever lived (while discounting the disputed case of Shigechiyo Izumi). Her lifespan has been thoroughly documented by scientific study, with more records having been produced to verify her age than for any other case.[3]

at the age of 114, she appeared briefly in the 1990 film Vincent and Me as herself, making her the oldest actress ever.

In 1965, aged 90, with no living heirs, Jeanne Calment signed a deal to sell her former apartment to lawyer André-François Raffray, on a contingency contract. Raffray, then aged 47, agreed to pay her a monthly sum of 2,500 francs until she died, an agreement sometimes called a "reverse mortgage". Raffray ended up paying Calment more than the equivalent of $180,000, which was more than double the apartment's value. After Raffray's death from cancer at the age of 77, in 1995, his widow continued the payments until Calment's death.

[silverscreenselect]

The oldest people in the world today were born towards the end of the 19th century and lived roughly half their lives before the adent of what we consider to be state-of-the-art medicine. It's very likely that a lot of people suffered through disease and other unhealthy lifestyles for many years and as a result died years earlier than they might have, even if whatever killed them didn't do so right away. You have people dying in their 50s who should have lived into their 70s (just the number of smokers alone who didn't know any better would have been a huge number), people dying in their 70s who should have lived into their 90s.

What will happen in the latter stages of this century when people who received top quality medical treatment their entire lives start reaching the century mark? Will we then see people getting closer to 150?

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

The oldest people in the world today were born towards the end of the 19th century and lived roughly half their lives before the adent of what we consider to be state-of-the-art medicine. It's very likely that a lot of people suffered through disease and other unhealthy lifestyles for many years and as a result died years earlier than they might have, even if whatever killed them didn't do so right away. You have people dying in their 50s who should have lived into their 70s (just the number of smokers alone who didn't know any better would have been a huge number), people dying in their 70s who should have lived into their 90s.

What will happen in the latter stages of this century when people who received top quality medical treatment their entire lives start reaching the century mark? Will we then see people getting closer to 150?

I don't expect a great change, the great changes in life expectancy are the result of increased public health infrastructure and the success over infectious disease, infant mortality, maternal mortality, famine ect. There have always been the long lived among us. Ramses II lived to be 90 or 91. I was just reading of a woman who died in Charleston in 1732 at age 104 having lived her early life in England, then Barbados, then South Carolina. (of course her story could be wrong) My father probably outlived his father because the surgeons are now able to treat Aortic Aneurysms. But those kinds of interventions won't make a big change.

I recomend How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter by by Sherwin B. Nuland, its interesting and well written book on the subject.