Fight Aging!

Naked mole rats are in the press ever more often of late - their longevity and cancer resistance makes them an ideal subject of study for researchers who aim to tinker human metabolism into a better state. We're all mammals in this end of the biosphere, so perhaps some of the mechanisms used by exceptional species can be ported over to humans in the form of medicine - gene therapies or carefully designed protein treatments that replicate the effects of having a particular gene. That research has been taking place for some years, but it always takes the public a while to catch up with what is happening in the research community. Here is a good introductory article on naked mole rats:

Pitch dark, dank, and seething with saber-toothed, sausage-shaped creatures, the world of the African naked mole-rat is a hostile habitat. In the 1980s, scientists made the remarkable discovery that naked mole-rats live like termites with a single, dominant breeding queen and scores of nonbreeding adult helpers that never leave their natal colony. But the bizarreness doesn't stop there. Naked mole-rats, unlike other mammals, tolerate variable body temperatures, attributed to their lack of an insulatory layer of fur. Their pink skin is hairless except for sparse, whisker-like strands that crisscross the body to form a sensitive sensory array that helps them navigate in the dark. Both the naked mole-rat's skin and its upper respiratory tract are completely insensitive to chemical irritants such as acids and capsaicin, the spicy ingredient in chili peppers. Most surprisingly, they can survive periods of oxygen deprivation that would cause irreversible brain damage in other mammals, and they are also resistant to a broad spectrum of other stressors, such as the plant toxins and heavy metals found in the soils in which they live. Unlike other mammals, they never get cancer, and this maintenance of genomic integrity, even as elderly mole-rats, most likely contributes to their extraordinarily long life span. In contrast to similar-size mice that only live 2-4 years, naked mole-rats can survive and thrive, maintaining normal function and reproduction, into their 30s.

From my perspective, naked mole rat research is likely to be more important for the cancer research community than for longevity science; their cancer resistance might be largely a matter of different behavior in a single gene, which gives researchers a clear target for investigation. On the longevity front, at this point it looks probable that naked mole rats are walking confirmations of the pacemaker membrane hypothesis, showing that the resilience of mitochondria to damage is very influential in determining life span. That doesn't mean we should try to make our mitochondria look like those of the naked mole rat, however - that would be enormously challenging, a massive undertaking. Instead, we should prioritize presently ongoing research aimed at repairing mitochondria. We don't need better mitochondria if we can walk into a clinic and have all of their damage repaired every decade or two.

This is in fact an expression of the general argument against all attempts to slow aging by changing human metabolism or the make up of our biochemistry. It will be very hard, and it will bring little benefit. Working on ways to repair the biology we have is a far better strategy, a goal that will be less expensive to achieve, and will produce a far superior result.