In 1900, the average U.S. life expectancy was 47 years old. That’s the current age of Tom Brady, Ryan Reynolds, and Shakira. But extraordinary advances in medicine and public health have made lifespans surge in the U.S. and throughout the world. The average American currently lives to about 79 years old. How long can this progress continue? As we have gotten so much better at allowing people to live to old age, how much progress have we made at confronting this ultimate boss of longevity? Today’s guest is Professor S. Jay Olshansky, from the school of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. We talk about progress and stasis in the most important science project in human history: how to increase human life.
- “Implausibility of Radical Life Extension in Humans in the Twenty-First Century”
- “If Humans Were Built to Last,” an illustration of what people would look like if they were optimally designed to live to 100
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
In the following excerpt, Derek Thompson and S. Jay Olshansky talk about the most important factor that’s extended human lifespans in the past 150 years.
Derek Thompson: So in the open, I try to give listeners a sense of the sweeping history of longevity. Before the 1500s, most international records show that roughly half of children in every civilization for which we have data died before their 15th birthday, but that since the 1800s, at least, we have consistently added years and years to the average human lifespan. And there’s so many different people that have played a role here: Edward Jenner and the smallpox vaccines, Semmelweis telling everybody to wash their hands, John Snow and the cholera map. And I was wondering, you’re an expert of the history of longevity, and if I told you that almost like at the beginning of a fantasy sports draft, you have to pick one thing, the most important thing that we did to extend human life since the scientific revolution, what would be that first draft pick? What would you select?
S. Jay Olshansky: Yeah, I would pick a player that had multiple skills, and those skills would be the ones that would be basically indoor living and working environments, refrigeration, removal of waste. The basic public health that evolved in the beginning of the 20th century which was foundational to all of the major changes that occurred in the rapid—I mean, that’s what caused the rapid increase in life expectancy in the early 20th century. Yeah, there were advances that happened in the mid-19th century, even the 18th century, but nothing really parallels the suite of advances that collectively we call public health. But it’s really sort of these cushy environments that we live in.
Here we are, I’m indoors in my home in this controlled environment, I’ve got a refrigerator in the other room, a bathroom over there, there’s clean water that I can access. There’s a lot of things that I don’t have to worry about, that generations today don’t have to worry about, that virtually every human throughout history had to worry about. And so yeah, the answer would be basic, basic public health in the early 20th century that really launched this revolution in human longevity.
Thompson: I take two points from that answer. The first is, I don’t remember where I heard this saying the first time, but something like 95 percent of health happens before you get to the hospital. To a certain extent, that’s what you’re saying, that health happens where you live, and the public health achievements, like indoor plumbing and refrigeration, that make our home life so much healthier than it used to be might be just as, if not more important, than the invention of specific medicines that help us when we do get sick, the penicillins and vaccines of the world.
Olshansky: I mean, look, the potential for longevity has always existed within humans. If anatomically modern humans arose 200,000 years ago, if you brought those folks into the present in our modern world, they would live as long as we do, if not longer, for reasons that you could ask me about later. But for the most part, humans are humans, and all we have done is unlock the potential for longevity that was always there. Now, keep in mind, there have always been long-lived people. Even a couple thousand years ago, I believe that there were some pharaohs that made it out at least into their 90s, maybe even past 100, so the potential for long life was always there for some. We have now unlocked the opportunity to live a long life for most, and that is a really big deal for reasons that we’ll be discussing later. But it really changed the landscape of human aging and longevity and survival, and we’re living it now.
The funny thing is, is that I wrote a paper not long ago with a colleague about communicable diseases and how in our modern world, we seem to forget how valuable and effective vaccines are at eliminating these childhood diseases because we don’t see them anymore. We don’t see smallpox, even measles, mumps, rubella. We don’t actually see people with this anymore, and yet some people seem to be averse to using some of these major advances in public health that have really saved our lives and allowed us all to live this long.
So it’s been a remarkable ride in the last 150 years. But yeah, and we’ll be discussing this ride going forward, we’ve done something very unusual. You don’t really see it in the wild; most animals don’t live to old age. The normal hazards that exist for most species kill them early. I mean, we were no different. And so the way in which you could see aging is in these indoor cushy environments that we’ve created, which now you could see our pets live long, and you could see zoo animals live long because, well, guess what? They’ve been brought into these controlled environments where the things that normally kill them have been pushed aside.
This excerpt was edited for clarity. Listen to the rest of the episode here and follow the Plain English feed on Spotify.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: S. Jay Olshansky
Producer: Devon Baroldi
Subscribe: Spotify
