The NY Times recently published an article questioning how long we could live. If you could live well over a hundred years, would you want to? Would you be healthy or dependent on others to function and be kept alive with drugs and doctor visits as seems to be quite common in states like Florida with older residents? Would you outlive your savings? The article references someone who lived to 122 years old and was independent until the age of 110. Very few of us ever live that long but if more of us could, is it good for the planet? There are of course more questions than answers but the NY Times offers an excellent expose on it. Check out the NY Times article that explores the science of aging and what can be done to improve the aging experience. How Long Can We Live? New research is intensifying the debate — with profound implications for the future of the planet. In 1990, not long after Jean-Marie Robine and Michel Allard began conducting a nationwide study of French centenarians, one of their software programs spat out an error message. An individual in the study was marked as 115 years old, a number outside the program’s range of acceptable age values. They called their collaborators in Arles, where the subject lived, and asked them to double-check the information they had provided, recalls Allard, who was then the director of the IPSEN Foundation, a nonprofit research organization. Perhaps they made a mistake when transcribing her birth date? Maybe this Jeanne Calment was actually born in 1885, not 1875? No, the collaborators said. We’ve seen her birth certificate. The data is correct. Read more.