The Wild World of Longevity

What Makes The Longevity Community So Unique?

If you’re reading this, it’s safe to say you’ve considered the idea of becoming immortal, and all that that would entail. Immortality has been a fascination of humanity for all of recorded history. This fascination is so strong that you might even say the appeal of warding off aging is a fundamental aspect of our humanity. Somehow, though, this has rarely been a goal of medical science, which has focused on “putting out fires,” in the form of practical treatments and cures for pathological conditions that arise in the course of our lives. Now we’re starting to see that trend reverse , with a renewed push towards understanding and preventing the ravages of age gaining traction in the scientific community and beyond. One of the fundamental questions of longevity science: What IS longevity, even? Are antibiotics longevity science because they extend the average human lifespan? Is cancer research because cancer risk increases with age? The longevity umbrella can be wide, but at its core it’s about research specifically devoted to promoting healthy aging and preventing age-related decline.

Unlike, say, cancer treatment, this is not a scientific pursuit that non-scientists tend to think of only as it becomes relevant to their lives. Everyone thinks about the inevitability of aging, and for many it is a singular goal, even an all-consuming thought or fear. Whether you’ve just noticed your face changing with age, or experienced serious age-related complications, aging affects us all and is ever-present in the minds of most humans. Perhaps because of this, the longevity-industry umbrella has rapidly evolved to include a fascinating and at times eccentric cast of characters from chaotic tech billionaires and cryptocurrency enthusiasts of every variety to some of humanity’s most brilliant scientists and engineers. It can at times resemble the last decade’s cryptocurrency craze as much as a new scientific frontier, and this makes it a particularly fascinating industry to be a part of. 

The Community

There are distinct groups of longevity industry players, but they overlap heavily: scientists, funders, founders, and enthusiasts. Our recent Longevity Summit at the Buck Institute for Aging demonstrated how common it is for people to belong to 2 or 3 of these categories at once, and also how important it is for the community to have better communication between the subcultures of these groups. Many scientists and non-scientists have become longevity company founders, for example, but those who invest funds in these new startups can struggle to vet the scientific validity behind their technology without working closely with the scientific community. Even more challenging, longevity enthusiasts seeking an easy way to reverse their own aging face a wild west of scam-artist supplement dealers and dangerous treatments with a wide range of scientific evidence behind them. Many are willing to travel to other countries to evade U.S. regulations on dangerous or evidence-lacking treatments.

The Science

On the science side of the industry, much of the basic science of what causes our bodies to age remains a mystery. Progress has been swift though, and the push towards development of reliable aging clocks (which we will address in a future article) is bringing much needed accountability and consistency to the pursuit of evidence-based treatment protocols. Advances in our understanding of cellular senescence, mitochondrial dysfunction, and the many genetic and epigenetic factors influencing aging promise to lead to many new treatments within the next decade that will prevent aging-related decline. Thus far, aging appears to be heavily multi-factorial, involving many different biological mechanisms. Because of this, you see scientists pursuing many different means of preventing biological aging which may in the future work together to give you the physiology of a 25-year-old well into what is now considered old age. Because it involves so much big data (genetic, multi omics data, health outcomes, etc.), there is a lot of opportunity for the involvement of advanced data analysis techniques, AI, and machine learning. There are also many ethical issues that other scientific fields don’t tend to confront, such as dealing with embryos, cloning, and even the question of how long humans should live. I reached out to Longevity Global’s Founder and Executive Director Dr. Christin Glorioso to comment on the state of science communication in this field - “It’s been incredible to see all the amazing scientific progress in longevity that’s going on right now, but it’s challenging for even well-informed non-experts to parse what’s snake oil and what’s solid science.”

The Financiers and Founders

Even on the finance side of things, this industry is unique and unlike other booming new industries. Many high-net-worth individuals have seen longevity as a way to achieve a powerful impact on humanity as well as their own health and well-being. Many traditional VCs, pharma companies, and other funding organizations have seen the potential for longevity tech to appeal to every demographic and are pouring resources into discovering which startups are well positioned to reap the rewards of this gold-rush. Further, the passion for progress in longevity has led to a proliferation of new nontraditional funding mechanisms, such as DAOs (Distributed Autonomous Organizations), with the backing of both traditional and nontraditional funding sources. Add to this the government support from large organizations like NIH and NIA, and you can see how the development of this industry is pulled in many different directions, guided by the financial backing of organizations and individuals with many different goals and ideas about the resulting science, ethical implications, and desired societal impact.

The Messaging

Because this field is so ideologically diverse, it has become a fascination of many in media. Our Longevity Summit events alone have attracted numerous documentary crews, BBC, New York Times, and Times UK journalists, as well as countless bloggers and influencers. At this year’s Summit I spoke with Aimee Schouff, a notable and accomplished movie producer whose passion for longevity and fascination with the longevity community has led her to help found a whole DAO-structured organization, Jellyfish DAO, to create media related to the many players in humanity’s pursuits of longevity. She works on Jellyfish’s documentary project, Ageless. That this group of Hollywood producers have created an organization around longevity science is a point of particular fascination for me, as it exemplifies the broad and at times even puzzling public appeal of this scientific field, as well as the diversity of voices contributing to the conversation. In a recent email exchange, a co-leader of Jellyfish’s DAO’s Ageless project, Hollywood film producer Daniel Sollinger, attempted to explain to me the field’s unique appeal. "What is a more fundamental desire for humans than to add time to the wonderful experience called life?”

The Enthusiasts

No discussion of longevity science would be complete without its most unique aspect - non-scientist longevity enthusiasts, many of whom spend a significant portion of their lives learning about the longevity industry and how they can support and/or make use of its progress. Communities of enthusiasts have sprung up with no real parallels in any other field of medical science. 

While they are often very well-informed scientifically compared to the average person, their lack of formal scientific training can nonetheless make them targets for the many risky or outright fake treatments being advertised as scientists race to create FDA-approved and evidence-backed anti-aging interventions. While most people know that exercise and certain dietary interventions have great scientific support for warding off age-related decline, it’s understandable that people desire easier and/or more effective interventions. As there are very few interventions which meet high standards of scientific rigor and exactly zero FDA-approved therapeutics, the resulting vacuum has allowed for a lot of unproven supplement-advertising companies, sometimes with the backing of notable scientists, to gain traction and begin experimental treatments outside of a traditional clinical trial setting. It is a fundamental belief of the Longevity Global organization that we must as a community find ways of ensuring people understand the risks and evidence-base of a treatment they might undertake (we will write more about supplements in a future post). We must ensure that all longevity stakeholders remain in communication with the field’s most qualified scientists and their most up-to-date research.

Conclusion

As the exciting new frontiers of longevity science open up in front of us, this rapidly developing industry has proven to be one of the most interesting collaborations of humanity. We at Longevity Global hope that it will retain its innovative edge, and also that it will progress in an ethical and accessible way. We are excited to continue to foster this community, to unite the many subcultures and demographics involved, and to help this cooperative effort move forward towards the evidence-based interventions that we believe will have a profoundly positive impact on humanity.