system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If telomers get shorter with every split of a cell, doesn't this mean we can pretty accurately calculate when someone will die of old age?
gpt
The concept behind the question is an interesting one and the idea of predicting the lifespan of an individual based on biological indicators is indeed a popular research topic.

Long story short specifically for telomeres, the answer is "not really". Different cells divide at different speeds. Also, many cells do not divide any further at all. If someone got even a minor injury or a mildly traumatic event or some weird habits, that would affect cell division as well. And then there are the individual differences in telomere lengths. Given all these, it will be virtually impossible to predict the "endpoint" of cell division in the real-time scale, let alone predicting one for an individual based on a few cells.

Also, generally telomere length is not the limiting factor for humans. There's some evidence that it can be a contributing one, but it is not really a major factor (the correlation was not practically significant and causation is somewhat dubious). There are many other ways a person can die "of old age" depending on the definition, including cancer, neurological disorders (Alzheimer's etc.), osteoporosis, cardiovascular diseases, kidney failure, weak immune system etc. etc., all of which are very much age-related. There are even sayings that most people don't have Huntington's Disease because we die before we reach the age of developing one.