Cancer researchers spend the last decade telling everyone “cancer isn’t a disease”. On the other hand we have antiaging people saying “aging is a disease”.
The two strategic positions are interesting to compare and given that cancer gets as much spending and attention it’s worth thinking about whether the strategy of the antiaging people is right.
The difference is that cancer researchers already have funding, and they need an excuse for why they haven’t found a reliable cure yet. Anti-aging researchers need money. Saying “X is a disease” implies that it should be cured.
The difference is that cancer researchers already have funding, and they need an excuse for why they haven’t found a reliable cure yet.
There are more downstream effects. One is that it allows companies to put drugs on the market that otherwise wouldn’t be allowed on the market because they can use the orphan drug act when the target a specific form of cancer that is below the limit of the orphan drug act.
Saying “X is a disease” implies that it should be cured.
It’s more complicated then that. It implies that aging is a cluster that you should be able to diagnose in people, then develop a drug that treats it and get FDA/EMA approval and then having health insurance pay for it.
I recently read about Jenna Luche-Thayer’s battle for more ICD codes for different forms of lyme and the importance of those. That’s a similar position to that of the cancer researchers in a field where there’s not much funding.
If we would buy the 7 hallmarks model, one conclusion would be that aging is 7 diseases. That means 7 things you can diagnose, get drugs approved for and get health insurance to pay for.
Cancer researchers spend the last decade telling everyone “cancer isn’t a disease”. On the other hand we have antiaging people saying “aging is a disease”.
The two strategic positions are interesting to compare and given that cancer gets as much spending and attention it’s worth thinking about whether the strategy of the antiaging people is right.
The difference is that cancer researchers already have funding, and they need an excuse for why they haven’t found a reliable cure yet. Anti-aging researchers need money. Saying “X is a disease” implies that it should be cured.
There are more downstream effects. One is that it allows companies to put drugs on the market that otherwise wouldn’t be allowed on the market because they can use the orphan drug act when the target a specific form of cancer that is below the limit of the orphan drug act.
It’s more complicated then that. It implies that aging is a cluster that you should be able to diagnose in people, then develop a drug that treats it and get FDA/EMA approval and then having health insurance pay for it.
I recently read about Jenna Luche-Thayer’s battle for more ICD codes for different forms of lyme and the importance of those. That’s a similar position to that of the cancer researchers in a field where there’s not much funding.
If we would buy the 7 hallmarks model, one conclusion would be that aging is 7 diseases. That means 7 things you can diagnose, get drugs approved for and get health insurance to pay for.
Ah, the legal implications of words. “Words as legal hacks” is even crazier version of “argument as soldiers”.