TY - JOUR T1 - The dynamic upper limit of human lifespan JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/124800 SP - 124800 AU - Saul Newman AU - Easteal Simon Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/04/05/124800.abstract N2 - We respond to claims by Dong et al. that human lifespan is limited below 125 years. Using the log-linear increase in mortality rates with age to predict the upper limits of human survival we find, in contrast to Dong et al., that the limit to human lifespan is historically flexible and increasing. This discrepancy can be explained by Dong et al.’s use of data with variable sample sizes, age-biased rounding errors, and log(0) instead of log(1) values in linear regressions. Addressing these issues eliminates the proposed 125-year upper limit to human lifespan. ER -