I’m just wondering about the problems with funding and researchers. One would think that plenty of money is actual around but it’s more about both awareness and some belief that a tangible return to the investors would be likely. That seems like it might be more a problem of asymmetric information as it were—or perhaps a bit of “language” between the groups. What’s your sense there?
You’re 100% spot on here. ‘Curing aging’ and ‘longevity’ aren’t common ideas in biomedical research, but ‘curing cancer’, ‘curing Alzheimer’s’ and ‘curing heart disease’ are. This is unfortunate given aging is driving all of these conditions.
It can sometimes be frustrating being in the longevity field, because researchers in other fields are incentivised to remain in their silos in which the core premises (e.g. curing cancer is good and effective) are treated as dogma, rather than see the bigger picture and work on solving the problem in more efficient ways.
Once you suggest that slowing aging might be a more effective approach to extending healthy human lifespan, many researchers find it difficult to engage in the conversation. This is especially the case since education into the biology of aging is extremely poor in most biomedical and medical programs. Even in my case, I went through 5 years of tertiary education without learning the information in the OP. This information I gathered through speaking to experts in the field, reading books such as Lifespan, reading blogs like Lifespan.io and FightAging.org, reading thousands of papers on this topic and attending aging conferences. Still to this day, there are unfortunately very few channels educating people on the hallmarks of aging and the connection between these and the diseases of aging.
Most cancer researchers I spoke to know very little about the hallmarks of aging, for example, and the connection between the hallmarks and disease. This is because their work focuses on solving the problem of cancer once it arises, rather than solving it in advance by curing aging. All of their incentives (grant funding, publication opportunities) are towards trying to cure cancer, rather than trying to extend healthy human lifespan (and delay the onset of cancer, potentially for hundreds of years) by slowing or reversing aging. This is unfortunate since, as I outlined in my post, aging is by far the biggest driver of cancer (and all other age-related diseases) and rates of cancer in biologically young people are very low.
For the above reasons reason, most biomedical researchers don’t speak the language of the ‘hallmarks of aging’, and aren’t familiar with terms like ‘senolytics’, for example.
For research is there any structure that might work a bit like various gig-econcomy sites. Basically forums that work as an infrastructure to allow a wide audience of those capable of research/analysis to form quick teams to tackle a problem. Or perhaps just do some of the initial leg work to see if some line of thinking is actually going somewhere? I have the suspicion that perhaps a lot of the effort here might be less about lab work and more about digging though the results (but that may well be completely wrong).
This is a great idea, and similar to what groups such as Deep Science Ventures are doing. They are essentially headhunting top biomedical researchers and funding them to work on important problems such as aging. There definitely needs to be more innovation like this to provide ways of funding anti-aging research so the field isn’t entirely dependent upon the small pennies it receives from government research councils.
Charities such as SENS research foundation fulfil a similar role too, though as a charity rather than a for-profit. They collaborate with research groups and fund what they deem the most high-impact research, and get the best research teams they can get to do it.
rates of cancer in biologically young people are very low.
And in the OP:
Anti-aging is more feasible for extending healthy lifespan rather than solving the individual diseases of aging
Sometimes, focusing on one disease is necessary, like in the case of cancer. To reach LEV, the risk of dying from cancer would need to be zero. The only way to get there in any reasonable amount of time is to developed a way (like WILT) of dealing specifically with cancer.
You’re 100% spot on here. ‘Curing aging’ and ‘longevity’ aren’t common ideas in biomedical research, but ‘curing cancer’, ‘curing Alzheimer’s’ and ‘curing heart disease’ are. This is unfortunate given aging is driving all of these conditions.
It can sometimes be frustrating being in the longevity field, because researchers in other fields are incentivised to remain in their silos in which the core premises (e.g. curing cancer is good and effective) are treated as dogma, rather than see the bigger picture and work on solving the problem in more efficient ways.
Once you suggest that slowing aging might be a more effective approach to extending healthy human lifespan, many researchers find it difficult to engage in the conversation. This is especially the case since education into the biology of aging is extremely poor in most biomedical and medical programs. Even in my case, I went through 5 years of tertiary education without learning the information in the OP. This information I gathered through speaking to experts in the field, reading books such as Lifespan, reading blogs like Lifespan.io and FightAging.org, reading thousands of papers on this topic and attending aging conferences. Still to this day, there are unfortunately very few channels educating people on the hallmarks of aging and the connection between these and the diseases of aging.
Most cancer researchers I spoke to know very little about the hallmarks of aging, for example, and the connection between the hallmarks and disease. This is because their work focuses on solving the problem of cancer once it arises, rather than solving it in advance by curing aging. All of their incentives (grant funding, publication opportunities) are towards trying to cure cancer, rather than trying to extend healthy human lifespan (and delay the onset of cancer, potentially for hundreds of years) by slowing or reversing aging. This is unfortunate since, as I outlined in my post, aging is by far the biggest driver of cancer (and all other age-related diseases) and rates of cancer in biologically young people are very low.
For the above reasons reason, most biomedical researchers don’t speak the language of the ‘hallmarks of aging’, and aren’t familiar with terms like ‘senolytics’, for example.
This is a great idea, and similar to what groups such as Deep Science Ventures are doing. They are essentially headhunting top biomedical researchers and funding them to work on important problems such as aging. There definitely needs to be more innovation like this to provide ways of funding anti-aging research so the field isn’t entirely dependent upon the small pennies it receives from government research councils.
Charities such as SENS research foundation fulfil a similar role too, though as a charity rather than a for-profit. They collaborate with research groups and fund what they deem the most high-impact research, and get the best research teams they can get to do it.
And in the OP:
Sometimes, focusing on one disease is necessary, like in the case of cancer. To reach LEV, the risk of dying from cancer would need to be zero. The only way to get there in any reasonable amount of time is to developed a way (like WILT) of dealing specifically with cancer.