Modern medicine is redefining old age and may soon allow
people to live regularly beyond the current upper limit of 120 years,
experts said on Wednesday.

Richard Miller of the Michigan University Medical School said tests on mice
and rats -- genetically very similar to humans -- showed lifespan could be
extended by 40 percent, simply by limiting calorie consumption.

Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist from Cambridge University believes
the first person to live to 1,000 has already
been born and told the meeting that periodic repairs to the body using stem
cells, gene therapy and other techniques could eventually stop the aging
process entirely.

De Grey argues that if each repair lasts 30 or 40 years, science will
advance enough by the next "service" date that death can be put off
indefinitely -- a process he calls strategies for engineered negligible
senescence.