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Startups in the longevity industry, which aims to prolong life or make people live forever, tend to attract scandal and charlatans.
A New Statesman feature makes it clear that some ventures are beginning to focus on compelling ideas that could eventually lead to modest, or even radical, life extension.
Celine Halioua (27-year-old PhD dropout, now working at anti-aging startup Loyal), is confident that we will have an aging drug when it's relevant for me. She predicted that such a drug would be available in a decade.
Loyal is focusing on the extension of life expectancy for dogs and not humans. However, Halioua's career spans both. The author of 2020 Sex Robots & Vegan Meat Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex, and Death, Jenny Kleeman of New Statesmans, argues that the technology could be used on dogs, and then extended to humans.
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It is possible to prevent them from getting sick when they are two or three years old. You will know in six or seven months, most likely sooner, if the intervention worked or not, she said to Kleeman. It is more convincing to try something in people if it works in complex species such as dogs, which aren't super-inbred like mice.
Kleeman spoke to many researchers who are more interested in human patients. Some of these researchers are involved in senolytics which remove aging cells which can lead to disease. Others work with GDF11 protein, which some researchers believe may have rejuvenating properties.
It is not certain that any of the research will ever be a viable treatment.
Kleemans' story explores the question of whether this would be a good thing or not for society. People who are unhappy with their jobs would want to stay on the job for many more years. What would an aging population do to the economy, inequality, and politics?
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These are valid questions. However, Kleeman spoke of a deep sense if optimism among the researchers. They believed that parallel advancements in other fields could lead to long and happy lives for large numbers of people.
Mark Allen, founder of Elevian anti-aging startup, said that this technology is not isolated. We were trying to figure out how to get cleaner energy, how we can eat healthier food, how we can live peacefully and how to travel to space. If we live better, there is no real estate crisis here on Earth.
READ MORE: Do you want to live forever? Big Tech and the search for eternal youth [Forbes]
Here's more on longevity: Scientists Believe Someone Born Today Will Live to Be 1,000 Years Old
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