One smart way to prepare for the cost of life extension is to invest now in biotech. If we are correct about life extension, the biotech sector will mushroom in value and your investment will grow with it. You will then be able to afford whatever treatment you need. And you can feel good that you contributed financially to the development.

If we are wrong about life extension, the sector will still grow in value, only not as much. This won't matter because the expense you're planning for (the cost of the treament and the cost of living longer) won't materialize either.

The trick is to diversify your investment within the sector. There will be many companys that take a wrong turn, make a poor bet and are punished accordingly. If your investment is spread across the sector, you'll be okay.

Here's Yahoo's list of top-performing technology themed mutual funds:

http://biz.yahoo.com/p/tops/st.html

[Posted by: Stephen Gordon at March 24, 2004 8:18 AM]

Many of the early regenerative therapies will be expensive in the West, but could be reasonable cost in Asia. An example of this is bypass surgury. Bypass surgury is typically USD90,000 or so in the U.S. Performed in Singapore (by surgeons just as competent as thos in the U.S.) such surgury is about USD11,000-15,000. Its lower still in Malaysia and, presummably, India.

Such medical "outsourcing" is already becoming a reality. The BBC recently had an article on thier website about this. I know people who have gone to Taiwan and Thailand for elective (i.e. cosmetic) surgury.

I fully expect to be hopping on the plane for Asia when the time comes for me to undergo "regenerative" therapy. I have never expected that insurance will pay for this stuff. Being self-employed, I have only catastrophic insurance anyways.

I do not expect "regenerative" therapy to involve the growing of organs in a chamber, then transplant of such organs into you. This is too primative and expensive. At worst, such therapy will involve the injection of stem-cells (either embryonic or adult) into you be shot or, morel likely, "nanotech" based drug delivery technique (several start-ups in both U.S. and Asia have developed this already).

More likely, compounds will be developed that will "immortalize" and or "turn-on" stem-cell reservours that already exist within your body, which will result in "in-sitsu" regeneration of your body. The compounds will be delivered by the same "nanotech" delivery systems that the stem-cells would be.

Not only will this be MUCH cheaper (can be done on out-patient basis, for one thing) but is much more elegant than barbaric practices such as surgury.

Yes, this is good 20 years away, but I really do believe this is possible. For more information on "nanotech" delivery systems, scan through the Nanotech Business Alliance company directory. There are a fair number of start-ups developing this now.

The other reason why Asia will be the best place for these therapies is that most people there have less money to spend on medical treatment and there is no "single, third party payer system" that makes medical technology so expensive in the West. A therapy has to be affordable in order to succeed in the marketplace. Also, Asia has, or will have, the largest global market for regenerative therapies anyways.

BTW, Aubrey de Grey is well aware of these aspects of Asia, with regards to development and commercialization of anti-aging therapies.

[Posted by: Kurt at March 24, 2004 5:04 PM]

Good comments; the medical outsourcing item is something I shall have to add to my thinking on the subject.

I agree that the end result of regenerative medicine will not be organs for transplant - however I do see it as a plausible intermediate stage. At the moment it looks possible that tissue engineers will be growing at least some full organs before we understand how to completely control the regeneration of organs in situ.

[Posted by: Reason at March 24, 2004 10:57 PM]

Facile, elitist, probably accurate. The vast majority of the US economy has been created by the baby boomers, the very ones who want and need longevity medicine. Only a fraction can afford it, not only because it is not fully here yet but because it has come largely too late for this generation of boomers to enjoy. Consequently, it is uncompassionate for this writer not to note that the largest majority will be unable to benefit from the coming longevity medicine when it fully hits the marketplace. Telling a 60-year-old to "save" after pointing out that in the US a single complex procedure in the hospital costs $100,0000, and the older reader probably has spent that or more on just insurance costs by that age (!), even if he/she has never been to the hospital, is cruel lack of consolation. This article is for the elite: the healthy wealthy.

[Posted by: David Dressler at June 23, 2008 11:15 AM]