How long can we live?

The Inquiry

BBC

News Commentary, News

4.6 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2019

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Life expectancy is going up as we develop new cures for the diseases that kill us off. But can we beat the most fatal condition of all - old age? We talk to scientists on the frontier of fighting the ageing process itself, when our bodies just start to wear out. In India, Tuhin Bhowmick is working towards 3D printing new organs so people don’t die waiting for transplants. In the US, Meng Wang is developing ways to use the tiny creatures that live in our guts to extend our lives. And in the UK, Lorna Harries and her team have made an amazing discovery that could let us roll back the ageing process in our own cells.

But is there an upper limit to the human life span? With all these advances racing ahead we ask – how long can humans live?

Contributors include:

Kaare Christensen - Head of the Danish Ageing Research Centre Tuhin Bhowmick - Director of Pandorum Technologies Meng Wang - Huffington Center on Aging at the Baylor College of Medicine Lorna Harries - Professor of Molecular Genetics, University of Exeter

Presenter: Helena Merriman Producer: Beth Sagar-Fenton

(An old woman with prayer wheels laughing at the Kyichu Buddhist Temple in Bhutan. Photo Credt: Tim Graham/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the inquiry on the BBC World Service with me,
0:03.1	Helena Merriman. Each week, one question, four expert witnesses, and an answer.
0:15.0	It's a sunny morning in Texas. Meng Wang is walking to work, wondering what she's going to find.
0:19.0	She opens the door to her lab.
0:21.0	Inside, tens of thousands of worms wriggling around in different boxes.
0:29.0	She peers into one, then another, and slowly it dawned on her.
0:34.2	What she's seen could help cure the most debilitating condition
0:37.5	known to us, aging.
0:47.9	Diseases related to aging kill a hundred thousand people every day, but a growing number of scientists say it doesn't have to be this way. Over the past few years
0:52.4	researchers have carried out remarkable
0:54.4	experiments challenging what we thought we knew about our lifespan. Billions of
0:59.0	dollars are being spent all over the world in effort to extend our lives. And this week we bring you some of the
1:04.9	world's leading researchers to tell you what they've found. You'll find out what
1:09.4	Meng Wang discovered with her worms and hear how one scientist reversed the aging process in
1:15.6	ourselves as we answer a question that all of you have probably asked how long
1:20.8	can we live?
1:46.7	Part one. It's development in life expectancy. We have doubled our lifetime in a very short period and we should really be happy that we were born right on this spot in history.
1:50.9	Our first expert witness, Cor Christensen, he worked as a doctor for many years, then one day decided he'd had enough of treating ill people.
2:00.0	He now runs the Danish Aging Research Center where he's trying to stop people
2:04.6	getting ill in the first place.
2:08.8	We all know what aging looks like from the outside.
2:11.8	What does it actually do to our bodies?
	...

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