The Funding Issues of Longevity Science

Aging research receives very little funding in comparison to other lines of medical research, which makes little sense given that it is the cause of the overwhelming majority of deaths in wealthier regions of the world with large research communities. Within aging research, very little funding is devoted towards intervening in the aging process, the work of producing treatments for aging. Within that set of funding, very little indeed is going towards research programs like SENS that have a shot at producing real results in the decades ahead. Indeed, if one were to be cynical, one might view the past ten to fifteen years of research in sirtuins and longevity genes, work that ostensibly has the aim of slowing aging, as a successful attempt by metabolic researchers to find a flag to wave that will let them obtain much more funding for their work on cataloging the exceedingly complex operation of cells. Certainly the output from most so-called longevity research has been more data on cellular metabolism, and nothing of material use beyond that - and if you spend time watching the field, that is exactly what we should expect from this work. Only comparatively new, disruptive approaches like SENS, based on repair of the cellular and molecular damage that causes aging rather than manipulating metabolism to slightly slow the onset of damage, have the plausible outcome of producing rejuvenation treatments at the end of the day. Even in the best of outcomes for work on sirtuins or ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs