KUSA - A small group of researchers and authors are predicting something that hasn't happened since the stories of the Old Testament, that soon people could live beyond 150-years-old.
Currently, the oldest person with verifiable birth and death records died in France at the age of 122.
Sonia Arrison, author of 100 Plus, says the first person to live beyond 150 has likely already been born.
"Maybe not everybody will be living to 150 within my lifetime," Arrison said, "but some people will be, and it's because of new technologies that are going to allow us to be healthier longer. Not just live longer, but be healthier longer."
Arrison points to new scientific breakthroughs including drugs and genetic therapy as enabling people to reach new record ages. The visionary also believes researchers will be able to grow spare, replacement parts in laboratories.
"Some of the exciting technologies that are going to allow us to live longer and healthier lives are things like tissue engineering, and that's that ability to grow brand new human organs using your own adult stem cells," Arrison said. "So for instance, scientists have already created brand new tracheas, brand new bladders, for real humans. These are not lab animals."
Doctors in Stockholm gave a cancer patient an artificial trachea in June, 2011.
Arrison also believes doctors will soon be able to change the DNA sequence of cells to slow or stop the aging process.
"The ability to hack the human body just like we can hack a computer is becoming more and more possible," Arrison said. "Gene therapy is one of the ways that scientists are hacking the human body by replacing code or tweaking code."
Dr. Thomas Rando, a Professor of Neurology at Stanford University and an expert on aging, is more skeptical about these longevity predictions.
"I think what will happen over the next generation is that more and more people will reach 100. More and more people will reach 110. Maybe another couple of people will reach 120, but I wouldn't bet on 150," Rando said.
The professor believes the same incremental increases in life expectancy that humans have seen for 1,000 years will continue.
Rando also warns that the obesity epidemic might actually shorten average life expectancies. Some public health experts have already predicted that today's middle-aged adults could be the first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.
For more information on Sonia Arrison and her new book, visit http://soniaarrison.com/.
(KUSA-TV © 2011 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)