Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 7th 2017

Discussions of radical life extension, technological acceleration, and artificial general intelligence were far more fringe concerns back then than is now the case, but this growth in awareness isn't a coincidence. Visions slowly become reality because people work to make that happen. Technological progress is not accidental: it is led by our desires. I should say that de Magalhães is here generous in not passing judgement on the value (or lack thereof) of most of the various ventures and classes of approach he surveys. But some approaches are definitely better than others, and to my eyes one the principal challenges at this time is to ensure that the effective (damage repair to reverse aging) rather than ineffective (metabolic alteration to slow aging) lines of research obtain significant support and funding. I think that there is definitely the need for some kind of metric to assess the utility of various efforts to address aging. Given figures for investment in a field, number of life span studies in various species, and average size of effect, one could potentially construct an Effectiveness Score to distinguish between fields that are absorbing a great deal of funding to no effect versus those that are more promising. I'd want an algorithm that clearly differentiates between, say, pharmaceutical targeting of mTOR, development of calorie restriction mimetics as a whole, and senolytics in terms of cost-effectiveness. I would expect the latter to be far more cost ef...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs