The Global Healthspan Policy Institute Wants Your Support in Lobbying for TAME Metformin Trial Funding

The Global Healthspan Policy Institute (GHPI) is a recently launched group whose principals are focused on much the same goals as the researchers of the Longevity Dividend initiative, which is to say pulling a lot more public funding into aging research aimed at extending healthy human life spans. The chosen methodology is the traditional one of lobbying and political action, aimed at politicians and bureaucrats who influence budgets relevant to the National Institutes of Health, the National Insitute on Aging in particular, and other public sources of medical research funding. The first public initiative for the GHPI is to petition and lobby for political support and public funding for the proposed TAME human trial of metformin as a drug to treat aging. The expectation that this will produce meaningful results in terms of extended health seems low to me, unfortunately: the animal study evidence for metformin to influence aging is scattered, contradictory, and terrible. This drug is, however, very safe, already approved, and widely used for decades. Arguably the real purpose of this exercise is to push the FDA into accepting a trial for a treatment aimed explicitly at intervention in aging rather than the treatment of any specific disease, using a vehicle - metformin - that regulators can't possibly object to on other grounds. Then the door stands open to anyone else with a potential therapy to treat the causes of aging. The FDA is otherwise a roadblock for all who wish to w...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs