World affairs

A wacky-looking British scientist claims that someone somewhere in the world today will become the first human being to live to 150.

That prediction we can believe, but Aubrey De Grey’s belief that the first person to live for 1,000 years will be born in the next two decades is somewhat, um, unbelievable.

'I'd say we have a 50/50 chance of bringing ageing under what I'd call a decisive level of medical control within the next 25 years or so,’ he told the Daily Mail.

'And what I mean by decisive is the same sort of medical control that we have over most infectious diseases today.'

The biomedical gerontologist reckons people will eventually visit their doctors for regular 'maintenance', which will include gene therapies, stem cell therapies, immune stimulation and a range of other advanced medical techniques to prolong their lives.

'The idea is to engage in what you might call preventative geriatrics, where you go in to periodically repair that molecular and cellular damage before it gets to the level of abundance that is pathogenic,' he said.

The longest living person on record lived to 122 and in Japan last year there were more than 44,000 centenarians on record.

[Main picture via Flickr]