Some of the nation’s brightest minds have declared an all-out war against aging. From Google’s campus to university labs to government think tanks, researchers claim that babies born this year should live up to 120 years and that, long before today’s infants mature, some readily achievable changes in health care will have produced millions of sharp, active and healthy centenarians.There’s just one problem: It’s not entirely clear that most Americans want to live to 120 — or much past 90, for that matter.
(MORE: Why We Should Look Forward to Living to 120 and Beyond)
The Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project asked more than 2,000 U.S. adults about their desire to live longer, as well as their hopes for enhanced life expectancy and medical services.
Oct 11, 2013,
09:46am EDT
How Long Do You Really Want to Live?
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Retirement
The PBS website for grown-ups who want to keep growing.
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Some of the nation’s brightest minds have declared an all-out war against aging. From Google’s campus to university labs to government think tanks, researchers claim that babies born this year should live up to 120 years and that, long before today’s infants mature, some readily achievable changes in health care will have produced millions of sharp, active and healthy centenarians.
There’s just one problem: It’s not entirely clear that most Americans want to live to 120 — or much past 90, for that matter.
(MORE: Why We Should Look Forward to Living to 120 and Beyond)
The Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project asked more than 2,000 U.S. adults about their desire to live longer, as well as their hopes for enhanced life expectancy and medical services.
Only 38% of respondents said they would be willing to undergo treatments to extend their lives to 120 or beyond; 56 percent said they would not, although two-thirds said they believed most other people would. Most Americans, though, do expect to live longer than the current average U.S. life expectancy of 79, according to Pew. Asked how long they thought they would live, 69% stated an age between 79 and 100, with 90 being the median.
In general, respondents to the Pew survey were hopeful about medical advances to address cancer and other potentially fatal conditions. But they were deeply skeptical about life extension research. Three out of four adults said they doubted that people would routinely live to 120 by 2050. Slightly more than half (51%) said that development would be “bad for society;” 41% said it would be a good thing. Two-thirds of respondents said they imagined such advances would mostly benefit the wealthy and only a quarter expect that treatments would be properly tested before being released to the public.