Sorting Through the World’s Oldest People

There has been a lot of media coverage this week of the death of 114-year-old Texas resident Eunice Sanborn, confirmed by LA’s Gerontology Research Group at the time to be the world’s oldest living person. That title now belongs to another 114-year-old woman residing at a nursing home in Georgia, Besse Cooper.

Or does it? Fox News Latino has a fun piece today about claims being made on behalf of a Cuban woman, Juana Bautista de la Candelaria Rodriguez (pictured). The country’s Prensa Latina wire serve says she celebrated her 126th brithday yesterday, but her age has yet to be confirmed by the LA record gatekeepers. Suggests senior claims investigator Robert D. Young:

“She [Rodriguez] just doesn’t exhibit the attributes of a person who would be 126-years-old,” Young said. “There is no such thing as a 116-year-old that can walk around, let alone an 126-year-old.”

According to Young, there has never been a case of someone being 123, much less 126. ”Studies in countries show us that 99 percent of the people who claim to be 115 years or older were false.”

Young says his organization would welcome an official verification submission for the Cuban woman, but that all signs currently point to her not being born the same year Huckleberry Finn was first published.

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