The Geroscience Perspective

The authors of this article express a representative version of the geroscience perspective on aging research and its application in medicine. It is similar to that of the Longevity Dividend initiative of the past decade, which is to say that if a large amount of time and funding is invested, perhaps calorie restriction mimetic and similar marginally effective drugs can be brought to the clinic in order to modestly slow the progression of aging and add a few years of healthy life expectancy sometime prior to 2030. I believe I'm not the only one to be entirely underwhelmed by this strategy. This is not the future of aging research that we should either want or support. Yes, it is a good thing that a sizable fraction of the research community is now prepared to work towards treating aging as a medical condition, and to advocate for that work in public. It wasn't always this way, and it took considerable effort to bring about the present renaissance. Yet if the research community aims low, consuming funding and careers to make progress towards goals for human longevity that are only a tiny bit removed from doing nothing at all, what is the point? If we want to instead see meaningful progress towards rejuvenation therapies capable of achieving a far greater impact on aging and the health of older people, we should look to groups like the SENS Research Foundation and its allies in the research community, or the companies developing senolytic therapies to clear senescent cel...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs