Communications of the ACM
Scientists Make Their Case for Extending Longevity
Many attendees of the Longevity Investors Conference take bags of pills on a daily basis in the hope of extending their years of good health.
Scientists and biotech founders made the case for various approaches to prolonging the number of years people might spend in good health at the two-day Longevity Investors Conference in Gstaad, a swanky ski-resort town in the Swiss Alps. The majority of them were trying to win over deep-pocketed investors.
There were 150 people at the meeting, and its organizers said that 120 of them were investors with millions or even billions of dollars at their disposal — and at least a million ready to pump into a longevity project. Plenty of would-be attendees were denied a $4,500 ticket because they didn't meet this criterion, a co-organizer said.
As the field attempts to define itself as scientifically sound, plenty of "anti-aging treatments" based on little-to-no human evidence continue to enter the market. Can billions of investor money offer a concrete path to evidence-based life extension for all?
"The idea is that aging biology is this lever that allows us to dial back on multiple diseases . . . and that would be much better than whack-a-mole medicine," says Martin Borch Jensen, chief science officer at Gordian Biotechnology, which focuses on therapeutics for diseases of aging.
From MIT Technology Review
View Full Article
No entries found