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Abstract
Some scientists have examined demographic data and concluded that there is a fixed, natural 'shelf life' for our species, and that mortality rates keep increasing. In 2016, geneticist Jan Vijg and his colleagues at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City rekindled the debate when they analysed the reported ages at death for the world's oldest individuals over half a century. Working with colleagues at the Italian National Institute of Statistics, the researchers collected records on every Italian aged 105 years and older between 2009 and 2015 - gathering certificates of death, birth and survival in an effort to minimize the chances of 'age exaggeration, a common problem among the oldest old. [...]by focusing just on Italy, which has one of the highest rates of centenarians per capita in the world, they avoided the issue of variation in data collection between different jurisdictions.