Why do people have such a short life expectancy?

It's because of disease, air pollution, obesity, and drugs/cigarettes. All of these things will shorten a persons life.

	god -  4827 pts -  (3 years ago)
	if someone avoids all of these things, (save air pollution), they still die off pretty early.. I'm also wondering why we don't have the tech to slow death, or aging.

Because the human body isn't really created to last much longer than 100 years... in time, we may evolve to have that capacity, but as of now we don't.

We are not tortoises or trees. We lucked out on this part of the gene pool. If only evolution had seen it fit to give us long life expectancy. You could always make yourself a cyborg and attempt to keep your parts up to date and thus bypass the entire process of evolution and live forever... potentially.

The Did You Know application on my T-mobile G1 says the Central Intelligence Agency put out a report saying the average life expectancy for the US is 78.11 years. The average of the whole world is 68.26 years.

Our lifespans are pathetically short. If we weren't self-aware it wouldn't matter, but we are so it does matter- greatly. Scientists are working on the problem from various angles, but for most of us over twenty or so, any breakthroughs will be just too late. Our grandchildren may live to be 300, and their grandchildren indefinitely.

"But Felix, you'll live forever in Heaven or Hell!" Yuh-huh...thanks for the comfort.

	felixthecat -  4794 pts -  (2 years ago)
	Here's something exciting: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/08/scientists-claim-fountain-of-youth-is-on-easter-island/

Compared to most animals, humans are one of the longest living creatures on this planet.