AFP via the ABC reports on the death of Susannah Mushatt Jones, who had been the oldest living person. A spokesperson for the Gerontology Research Group (GRG) said of Ms. Jones:
She liked bacon and eggs, she liked to sleep a lot, she didn't drink and smoke, she did marry but she didn't have any kids.
She was born on 6 July 1899 in the U.S. state of Alabama, and died in a nursing home in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. On her 106th birthday she had said:
I surround myself with love and positive energy. That's the key to long life and happiness.
takyon: The current oldest living person is the last living person born in the 19th century 1800s.
Further information:
GRG World Supercentenarian Rankings List
Biography of Jeanne Calment, oldest person ever
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We are accustomed to treating aging as a set of things that go wrong with the body. But for more than twenty years, there has been accumulating evidence that much of the process takes place under genetic control. We have seen that signaling chemistry can make dramatic differences in life span, and that single molecules can significantly affect longevity. We are frequently confronted with puzzling choices the body makes which benefit neither present health nor fertility nor long-term survival. If we permit ourselves a shift of reference frame and regard aging as a programmed biological function like growth and development, then these observations fall into place and make sense. This perspective suggests that aging proceeds under control of a master clock, or several redundant clocks. If this is so, we may learn to reset the clocks with biochemical interventions and make an old body behave like a young body, including repair of many of the modes of damage that we are accustomed to regard as independent symptoms of the senescent phenotype, and for which we have assumed that the body has no remedy.
An epigenetic clock controls aging (DOI: 10.1007/s10522-015-9617-5)
Elizabeth Parrish, CEO of the biotech company BioViva, claims that her body's cells are 20 years younger after testing her company's age-reversing gene therapy on herself.
[...] Though details of the fast-tracked trial are unpublished, Parrish says it involved intravenous infusions of an engineered virus. That infectious germ carried the genetic blueprints for an enzyme called telomerase, which is found in humans. When spread to the body's cells, the enzyme generally extends the length of DNA caps on the ends of chromosomes, which naturally wear down with cellular aging. In a 2012 mouse study, Spanish researchers found that similar treatment could extend the lifespan of the rodents by as much as 20 percent.
Parrish claims that test results from March—which have not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal—reveal that her blood cells' telomeres have extended from 6.71 kilobases of DNA to 7.33 kilobases. The difference, she estimates, equates to a cellular age difference of 20 years.
Would you put your life on the line for your company?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @06:32AM
What the heck submitter/editor? Did you not think the age the person was at the time of their death was important?? It was 116 by the way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @06:41AM
"She was born on 6 July 1899"
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday May 14 2016, @07:13AM
I had originally written that she died this 12 May. However my draft was lost in a computer mishap and I forgot to include that in the rewrite.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @06:32AM
The wikipedia link shows three people left born in the nineteenth century, the final year of which was 1900
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @11:00AM
That definition of a century is only used by fools who believe imperial measurements are best. Very strong correlation with believing ina big man up un the sky too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @01:39PM
No, that definition is for those of us who know how to count. It is really very simple. A century has 100 years. A decade has 10 years.
Why you fucking idiots can't understand that is beyond me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @06:41AM
Most have forgotten by now, but a major part of the current approach to cancer relies on the fact that probability of getting cancer does not drop after a certain age. This has been largely dismissed since the 1950s as due to inaccurate recording of age, etc. So how do we know this age is accurate?
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday May 14 2016, @07:26AM
I don't know what the specific evidence was, but Guinness World Records and the Gerontology Research Group were satisfied as to her age.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @06:55AM
No fucking kids in your basement,
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Saturday May 14 2016, @07:40AM
Ummm... (OK, I give up)... if not in you basement, where did you bury them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @08:27AM
In the garden like a normal person!
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Saturday May 14 2016, @08:42AM
FEED ME SEYMOUR
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Saturday May 14 2016, @09:16AM
It's full... the prev owner of the house was a very thorough and, I must say,... erm... a very normal person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday May 14 2016, @06:57AM
My word! You seem to have excluded us time travelers! ಠ_ರೃ
(Score: 2, Disagree) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 14 2016, @09:10AM
The 1800s started 1800 and ended 1809. Anyone born in that time would be more than 200 years old by now.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Saturday May 14 2016, @09:41AM
WRONG [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @01:56PM
What, a pedant who doesn't actually know jack shit about the topic of their pedantry?
Well, that's a first!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @10:25AM
How old was she in waking hours? Is there truth to the old adage, I'll sleep when I'm dead? Did she choose instead to sleep while alive, and lived longer?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday May 14 2016, @02:20PM
The oldest living American is Goldie Michelson, who was eight years old when the Cubs last won the world series and, four or five when electronics were invented a year after the first airplane flew at Kitty Hawk.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday May 14 2016, @04:48PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Saturday May 14 2016, @10:04PM
Goldie Michelson was born in Russia and lives in the United States, whilst Marie-Josephine Gaudette (who is older) was born in the United States and lives in Italy.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Saturday May 14 2016, @05:04PM
Makes you wonder how many years of those 116 that were enjoyable. And how many were done purely because of lack of ability to end life or being scared of doing so. Though she seemed okay, albeit old of course.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Saturday May 14 2016, @11:25PM
Yeah, right? All the news I read is 'what is the secret of long life?' and apparently nobody has asked 'what did you learn in such long life?'
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Sunday May 15 2016, @01:12AM
To eat? ;-)
Don't worry too much. To live long one needs both some luck and paying attention to health. That excludes quite a lot of people.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Monday May 16 2016, @12:58PM
I read that she liked bacon and eggs. That sounds like an enjoyable enough life. Bacon alone would be enough, really...the eggs are just icing on the cake.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Thursday May 19 2016, @09:58AM
Are we not forgetting someone?