Commentary on the Developing UK Government Position on Healthy Longevity

One option for patient advocacy for the treatment of aging as a medical condition is to petition governments and large international organizations such as the World Health Organization to adjust their positions on research funding and goals in medicine. This a fairly popular path, for all that I think it not terribly effective at speeding up the cutting edge of research and development. Large organizations of any sort are inherently conservative, and tend to get meaningfully involved in new fields of human endeavor only long after their support would have been truly influential. Nonetheless, numerous examples of government focused initiatives have emerged from our community over the past decade. They include the Longevity Dividend initiative, petitioning the US government for greater public funding for translational aging research; the small single issue political parties focused on longevity in Germany, Russia, and elsewhere; efforts to influence the contents of the International Classification of Diseases produced by the World Health Organization, in order to classify aging as a disease; and so forth. In recent years, an informal collaboration between advocates, investors, and others in the UK has been making inroads into influencing thinking on aging and longevity in government circles in that country. One of their successes is noted here. Success, yes, and somewhat more than has been achieved elsewhere. Nonetheless, progress in these efforts in any part of ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Politics and Legislation Source Type: blogs