Fight Aging!

This messy popular science article is an essay length expression of futility on the part of a journalist who accepts that he is not equipped to understand the field of aging research and the longevity industry that has arisen in the past decade. One can talk to the talking heads, but they will all say something different. One can look for proof of efficacy for specific approaches, and find only contradictory data, or only compelling animal data, or only small effect sizes, and a lack of the sort of certainty that arises from large human trials. Those trials are still in the future for near every approach to the treatment of aging that might work.

Like most tours of the field written by journalists, the article lumps together terrible approaches, promising approaches, approaches with good supporting data, approaches with mixed to bad supporting data, and makes little attempt to distinguish between them. The journalist cannot distinguish between them, he doesn't have the several years of learning the science that would be needed to even start to have a useful opinion on approach A versus approach B. For the layman it is just a list, and those most willing to talk about the list are those with a vested interest in profiting from companies working on one item or another item, or are scientist with career prospects that require them to be overly cautious in their public pronouncements. Objectivity is hard to find.

The Wild Science of Growing Younger

There are a lot of hyperbolic and crazy-sounding theories and assertions in the vast movement to counteract the inexorable march from the quick to the dead. Xprize founder Dr. Peter Diamandis thinks we may one day upload our consciousness to the cloud. As such, the 62-year-old is doing everything he can to keep his body healthy in the meantime and maybe reach "longevity escape velocity" - continuing to extend his life long enough to take advantage of ever-more life-extending methods. His business partner - motivational speaker and entrepreneur Tony Robbins - says that stem cell injections he received in Panama (because it's illegal in the U.S.) not only repaired a torn rotator cuff but rejuvenated his entire body. Half-billionaire Bryan Johnson reportedly spends about two million dollars a year on testing, taking more than 100 drugs and supplements, and - for a time - infusing his teenage son's blood plasma. And they are not alone. Jeff Bezos, Yuri Milner, and other tech titans are reported to have together poured about $3 billion into Altos Labs, a startup promising to reprogram human cells to their youthful state.

Rejuvenation efforts also promise to brighten the twilight years by allowing people to live longer and be healthier and more vigorous. Picture 80-year-olds with the body of a 60-year-old. Proponents talk about not only extending lifespan but also what they call healthspan. "It's this biology of aging that makes us get Alzheimer's or cancer or heart disease or diabetes," says Dr. Nir Barzilai. "Aging is the mother of those diseases ... You deal with the mother, and you don't have those kids." After speaking with a dozen experts or advocates, reading four books, parsing over 30 research papers, and absorbing popular press coverage, I know two things about the possibility of slowing or reversing aging. First, anyone can do a few cheap, simple things (like exercise) to improve their longevity prospects. Second, several new tactics, technologies, and tools might someday work.

If you'd hoped for a conclusive destination at the end of this journey, I'm sorry. But in place of answers, we have a framework for evaluating the many questions that emerge. Science has a good sense of what healthy aging should look like. And objective research can begin to explore if any far-fetched ideas mimic that, without bad side effects. Some medications might slow down some aspects of aging. Or perhaps the side effects of these meds just substitute new health problems for the ones proponents aim to fix. You might wait for more info on that before you swallow. Can we inject foreign cells to repair our bodies or inject chemicals that reinvigorate our own cells? This seems to work in mice, worms, or petri dishes. But people without vested interests say we need much more evidence. That's going to take a long time. For so much of anti-aging or reverse-aging science, the old academic refrain applies: "further research is needed."