A massive amount of longevity research is crowdfunded by a small community of longevity enthusiasts. Lifespan.io and SENS are both crowdfunded.
Unfortunately, death is a difficult topic for people to discuss and think about. It is mental hazard that induces existential dread, so it is very difficult to hold anyone's attention long enough to garner support for longevity initiatives. People convince themselves that death is in some indefinite future, and that they are okay with dying, but on the deathbed that fear and horror of the eternal void is always there.
But if offered on their deathbed to give up everything they have for a chance to live longer, most people would take it at that moment without hesitation. However, we are immature beings, without a propensity for long-term planning, so most people neither donate nor advocate for longevity research.
I think massive strides in longevity are possible today with enough research. The problem is funding. The problem is garnering social support.
We spent trillions of dollars fighting COVID, which will affect a select few, but we cannot spend a minuscule fraction of that on aging, which has the same end result, but for everyone. It's shortsighted and sad.
I suspect you might be reading a little bit too much into people's skepticism about anti aging research.
Sure, death and aging are hard topics.
But not having any more data about what funding bodies have to say, I would go for the sad and simpler explanation : all proposed "cure for aging" in the history of mandkind have turned out to be ineffective (either disappointing or scams)
(Whereas "cure for fatal disease" have kind of a track record.)
This, I believe, will end the day we have a tech that's "promising enough", but "enough" will be hard to reach.
I don't find it unfair to have a higher bar to clear for "elixir of youth" than for "covid-19 vaccine".
I would agree with you on the cause of skepticism, for one caveat - there is no substantial public funding whatsoever when it comes to anti-aging research.
This shows that people are more content with ignoring the horror of death than actually trying to fix it.
It's one thing to not fund an organization you've never heard of, that is making claims you're unsure of. It's another thing to not even try to solve a pressing problem with public funding and/or initiatives.
Clearly, people find death problematic, given the lengths we go to avoid it when it comes within striking distance. We moved the world to deal with the imminent threat of COVID. But when death is not near us, we tend not to think about it at all - we actively avoid thinking about it, even.
I think future historians will find this general shortsighted behavior quite interesting - how can a species that so profoundly fears death collectively ignore the issue of aging so as to not even dedicate a noticeable fraction of money, time, and effort into solving aging?
In all likelihood, the first products of the longevity research will not "cure aging", but reset the internal clock of the body slightly back. For example, five years.
That would still be a major boost to health of said individual.
Most of such improvements will probably be invisible. If they manage to reduce skin age, too, they will wallow in money.
Your last line made me wonder if there is any serious R&D in the cosmetics industry (or if all money goes to hiring better-looking celebrities to advertise products that do the same nothing as they have done in the past - which sounds like a much saner business plan than "actually trying to fix aging").
> It is mental hazard that induces existential dread
No, some of us simply conclude that anything beyond the usual exercise, eat healthy, etc has negative payoff.
In other words: devoting oneself to a lifelong quest for longevity can be expected to consume far more years of life than it will add. And those years consumed will be younger, healthier, more alert years than any to be gained.
I notice that you use the expression "the usual means" twice in this discussion.
Models of financing science change all the time. Most of the breakthroughs before 1950 were not funded by means that we currently consider usual and current models of financing science are, to a degree, holdover from the Cold War. But note that the same does not apply to applied technology: the VC model that runs Silicon Valley is very successful compared to the usual grant structures.
It is the Online Age now and crowdfunding is an alternative that wasn't available before. There will inevitably be a lot of misses and outright frauds, but I prefer a world with alternatives that do not depend on bureaucracy as much.
Notably, the longevity researchers spent a lot of energy to get aging classified as disease. This is finally bearing some fruit, but I can't help thinking that the same energy could have been spent better in their areas of expertise, not in lobbying.
On the other hand, a crowdfunding campaign can be managed by interns.
Sure, I’m not against crowdfunding research, as long as there is a clear reason for it. For example, too much budget directed to covid is hurting other perfectly valid areas? Fine. Or, someone has a perfectly good research plan, but failed to compete in the usual arena? Fine, too. But there is also a big potential for pseudo-science to be funded in this manner if it’s not 100% clear why. Especially if the reasons sound somewhat like conspiracy theories.
Rapacymin and mTOR has been studied a great deal through the usual means. There is a connection to Diabetes so the subject has received quite a lot of attention.
What does it matter as long as they release the data and their methods. Then someone else can verify it. So it is just science as usual really when you think about it.
Sure, theoretically you’re right, but in practice there are thousands of extremely well-qualified researchers being paid to assess such research plans. I don’t know if it’s reasonable to expect that the general public will simply start to evaluate research projects all of a sudden, voluntarily and effectively. There is a huge potential for pseudoresearch to thrive in this model.
