Popular Science: 100 years ago, scientists predicted we’d live to 1,000 years old

From my What a Difference a Century Makes—or Not column on Pop Sci

In 1925, the average American lifespan was 58 years.

When Frederick Grant Banting discovered how to isolate insulin from animals in 1921, the young Canadian doctor—a WWI veteran and former farm boy—changed the calculus of diabetes forever. Prior to the 1920s, the disease killed more than 80 percent of preteen diabetic children. Banting’s breakthrough replaced the sometimes toxic remedy goat’s rue, or Galega officinalis, a flowering plant with glucose-lowering properties derived from guanidine. His discovery came during a wave of medical optimism fueled by new scientific tools and knowledge that were rapidly unlocking the mysteries of human anatomy, disease, and aging...

100 years ago, scientists predicted we'd live to 1,000 years old

Many thanks to Annie Colbert, Popular Science Editor-in-Chief.

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