Family Life

07.05.11 | Sarah Harnisch

In Genesis 6:3, after Noah's flood, God said man's days will be limited to 120 years. And the longest life expectancy in recent record is 122 years, in Japan. But scientists think the first modern person who will live to be 150 has already been born.

A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research, Dr. Aubrey de Grey says within his own lifetime doctors could have all the tools they need to "cure" aging -- banishing diseases that come with it and extending life indefinitely. He says if his predictions are right, the first person to live to be 1,000 could be born in 20 years. De Grey sees a time when people will go to their doctors for regular "maintenance," which will include gene therapies, stem cell therapies, immune stimulation; and periodically repairing molecular and cellular damage before it gets pathogenic. Scientists in America are dismissing his claims, calling them "psuedo-science." A panel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology actually offered $20,000 to any molecular biologist who showed that Grey's theory was so wrong it was "unworthy of learned debate."