YEKATERINBURG, February 24. /ITAR-TASS/. A life span of 120 years will become a norm for many developed countries by 2050, head of Russia's parliamentary lower house Committee on Science and Science-Intensive Technologies, academician Valery Chereshnev believes.
“If healthcare improves and people’s biological features change at the same pace in the lifetime of the current generation in developed European countries, lifetime will soon approach 90, while by 2050 a life span of 110-120 years will be the norm,” the scientist told a round table on gerontology in Yekaterinburg, capital of the Urals district, adding that this applied only to countries “where the average lifetime is now about 80-82 years”.
Chereshnev's forecast was primarily for top lifetime countries, among them Andorra (84 years), Japan (83.5 years), a group of Scandinavian countries and the USA (80 years) and developed European countries (77-80 years). Average lifetime in Russia was about 72 years and there was a considerable disparity of more than 10 years between men and women, he said.
“We do not live up to these forecasts so far: In 2012, Russia ranked 68th by life span among about 250 countries. Yet given the fact that there are some Central African countries where people live 45-47 years on average, we perform more or less decently in this rating,” said Chereshnev.
He said the forecast made by Soviet academician Alexander Bogomolets as early as in the 1930s is now confirmed. Bogomolets believed the lifetime of any mammal, including a human being, was the period of growth, or skeletal calcification, multiplied by a 5-6 ratio.
“The present generation where women grow until 20, men until 25 years, has a potential life span of 120-150 years. Bogomolets’ contemporaries, who were sure the average life span cannot exceed 80 years, ridiculed the colleague, but after slightly more than 70 years their forecasts failed,” said the scientist.