An Interview With David Stipp
David Stipp is the author of a recently released book on longevity science. Much like the mainstream of the research community, he is of the view that slowing aging is the only practical way forward. Which is a pity - we definitely need more of the popular science authors to lean towards advocating repair strategies like SENS, but I don't see it happening before opinions change within the scientific community.
In any case, here is an interview that presents a more nuanced version of Stipp's viewpoint than has appeared in articles to date. Regardless of his opinions on the science, you'll find things to agree with:
Q: What's the brass ring in anti-aging research?
A: The near-term, totally feasible prospect scientists are working toward is the development of a safe drug that delays by seven or eight years the onset of diseases associated with aging. The goal is to slow the rate of aging and postpone all the bad stuff: Alzheimer's, cancer and heart disease are the three main killers, and then there are lesser diseases, from osteoporosis to cataracts. A true anti-aging drug would also extend maximum lifespan....
Q: Is that the only barrier to clinical trials in humans?
A: No. The main barrier, as with all anti-aging research, is that there's no funding. We've got ever more promising basic research and yet I don't know of anybody funding clinical work on agents that will possibly slow aging.Q: Why aren't pharmaceutical companies all over this?
A: There's no economic incentive. A single drug in clinical development generally costs around a billion dollars, from the very beginning to the end. A pharmaceutical company can only afford to spend that kind of money on trials of something it knows it can sell as a prescription drug, with a pretty high profit. The issue here is that you can't sell something as a prescription drug unless the Federal Drug Administration recognizes that there's an indication for it. And the FDA does not consider aging a disease, so it wouldn't give regulatory approval to a prescription drug used to treat aging....
Q: Why haven't anti-aging researchers been more successful at marshalling resources?
A: In a nutshell, the world of medical science doesn't recognize what's happened in the research on gerontology. Partly it's because the anti-aging field has historically been an area rich with snake oil and con artists, and partly it's because aging is extraordinarily complicated - so much so that unlike diseases, many biologists felt that figuring out exactly what was driving it was a hopeless cause. To a large extent, that's how the FDA and many physicians still think about anti-aging research. People just don't know how far the science has come and how promising it is.
It is good to see more people pointing out the lunatic roadblock to progress that is the FDA. We stand upon the verge of therapies to treat aging, and the unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats forbid outright all application of such technology - so the funds aren't there for research and development. It is nothing less than insanity.
I don't know why the medical establishment thinks aging is more complex than disease. Of course there is more than one mechanism involved, but the number of mechanisms is surely magnitudes less than the number of different diseases - and those mechanisms don't include non-human agents constantly evolving and trying to kill you.
Aging happens in nearly the same way to everyone, so the main mechanisms can't be all that complex.
" and the unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats forbid outright all application of such technology - so the funds aren't there for research and development. It is nothing less than insanity." - This makes me rage.
Has anyone actually talked to the FDA to find out what it would take to convince them to classify aging as a treatable disease?
Would rejuvenating a mouse convince them?
I don't think that slowing aging is the only practical way forward, and don't recall ever having said that. I think regenerative medicine is also an exciting pursuit, and that it may well help address organ damage from diseases of aging in the not-distant future. But I have some concerns about its affordability over the next few decades, particularly in an era of growing resistance in high places to novel, high-priced therapies in geriatric medicine -- witness CMS balking at covering Dendreon's Provenge, a therapy involving re-engineered cells of patients that isn't all that different from regenerative medicine -- which may lead to a situation in which only the wealthy get access to things like stem-cell-engendered replacement organs. I also worry about using regenerative medicine in the relatively near term to patch up failing organ systems in people who wind up with dementing diseases -- it's not hard to see the downsides of that. So the bottom line for me (and I'm quite aware that reasonable people may differ): I think we should definitely pursue regenerative medicine with an eye toward rejuvenative therapies in the future. But I think we should be mindful of its risks as well as benefits in the relatively near future, and I think we (particularly purse-string holders) should also take more account of the very large bang-per-research-dollar buck that is promised by pushing forward on demonstrably effective CR mimetics, or similar anti-aging drugs.
@David Stipp: I'd taken the following passage from your Huffington Post piece as an explicit rejection of SENS and Aubrey de Grey's vision, given that he's the only researcher to spend much time talking on the topic of multi-thousand year life spans:
"When I tell people that anti-aging drugs are no longer a distant prospect, they often assume I'm talking about the quest for immortality. That's not surprising, given the buzz generated in recent years by visionaries who speculate about re-engineering the human body to last thousands of years. But actually I don't find that far-out prospect very interesting -- it bears the same relationship to serious aging science that warp-drive spaceships do to aeronautical engineering."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-stipp/why-anti-aging-science-re_b_644308.html
And a reference to de Grey's discussion of accident-terminated life spans:
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2005/09/1000-years-of-h-1.php
Perhaps I was reading too much between the lines, but it certainly sounds like you're in the metabolic manipulation camp.
Where our views differ there seems to be economic, judging from the last sentence in your comment. From my perspective, the net result of the research community chasing CR mimetics rather than SENS-like repair strategies for the next two decades will be a loss. A large, massive, huge loss of lives that might have been saved - which sadly seems to be the way things are heading.
See:
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/09/the-scientific-debate-that-will-determine-how-long-we-all-live.php
Personally I think the only reason governments are even taking the degree of interest they are is because the alternative is a catastrophic meltdown of the health services. In my mind they should have thought of this 10-15 years ago when the demographics clearly indicated that the baby boomers posed an enourmous burden on both the pensions and medical budgets. Still as they say better late than never. Let hope we can move things forward and make up for lost time!