It can be argued that the largest challenge facing the development of means to treat aging as a medical condition is that there is, as of yet, no useful consensus position on how to measure aging, how to define aging, or which of the countless measurable aspects of biochemistry that change with age are the most appropriate targets for therapy. This means that any given research group or biotech startup has a lot of leeway to argue that their approach is the right one – and it might take twenty years to establish the effects of their therapies on long-term health and life span, even given a successful development program. There is a shotgun approach underway, in which the research and development communities try many different things and see how it goes, only limited by their ability to persuade sources of funding to support the work. I imagine that this wi…
The Lack of Consensus on Approaches to Aging as a Flaw to be Fixed
It can be argued that the largest challenge facing the development of means to treat aging as a medical condition is that there is, as of yet, no useful consensus position on how to measure aging, how to define aging, or which of the countless measurable aspects of biochemistry that change with age are the most appropriate targets for therapy. This means that any given research group or biotech startup has a lot of leeway to argue that their approach is the right one – and it might take twenty years to establish the effects of their therapies on long-term health and life span, even given a successful development program. There is a shotgun approach underway, in which the research and development communities try many different things and see how it goes, only limited by their ability to persuade sources of funding to support the work. I imagine that this wi…