Fight Aging!

Today I'll point out a high quality commentary on what we might take away from the War on Cancer, launched 50 years ago. In the longevity advocacy community, the notable past success in building a cancer research community, as well as in persuading the public to support large-scale efforts to bring an end to cancer, are viewed as an aspirational goal. Over the years there has been talk of attempting to reproduce these successes in order to engineer public support for a War on Aging. There were many moving parts to the War on Cancer: decades of preliminary patient advocacy and lobbying; the evolution of public attitudes towards cancer and cancer research; progress in science and funding; the challenges inherent in the growth of a truly massive research community; the creation of a funding ecosystem to power that broad range of research. Much might be learned from an examination of each.

There are other lessons we might learn here, however, such as the modes of failure that emerge from focusing on diseases of aging, such as cancer, rather than on aging itself. Or that the wrong approach to a problem can absorb any amount of funding to produce only incremental progress. Diseases of aging are caused by the mechanisms of aging, yet little to no work made the deliberate effort to target those mechanisms until comparatively recently. Attempting to treat the disease, rather than its cause, inevitably has limited utility. As the author points out here, the War on Cancer was set up in a way that limits the scope of benefits to health that can result. Prevention is a noble goal, but cancer cannot be entirely (or even largely) prevented by lifestyle choices, as one cannot choose not to age.

50 years of the "war on cancer": lessons for public health and geroscience

Reflecting on the realities of the past 50 years of the "war on cancer", and the reality of the prevalence of comorbidity for populations surviving to the upper limits of the human lifespan, we cannot continue on the same course originally plotted out by the National Cancer Act of 1971. Today cancer is still the second leading cause of death in America. The project of behaviour control has not successfully altered this outcome, in large part because it does not alter the most significant risk factor for cancer - age.

I am not suggesting that public health should concede the battle and abandon the important preventative measures of smoking cessation and a physically active lifestyle. Of course not. But we should have the humility to recognize that doubling down on these efforts for the next half a century is unlikely to yield a significant health dividend for today's ageing populations. Strategic innovation in preventative medicine will be required. The strategy of behaviour control must be supplemented with the strategy of rate control. In order to unify the aspirations to "save people" from cancer mortality while also ensuring they live longer and better lives, the inborn ageing process must also be targeted. To fixate on disease elimination without also aspiring to alter the rate of ageing will prove costly with diminishing health returns because it does not increase the healthspan.

The public health lessons of the 50-year campaign to defeat cancer in the USA ought to inform global public health more generally. The European Commission, for example, has recently identified cancer as a "mission area". A House of Lords "Science and Technology Select Committee" UK report was released, the catalyst of which an assessment of the feasibility of the government's Ageing Society Grand Challenge mission. Chapter 6 of this report is entitled "The Ageing Society Grand Challenge", and it sets the goal of increasing healthy life expectancy by 5 years by 2035. The World Health Organization dedicated the decade 2021-2030 as the decade of "healthy ageing". The campaign identifies four main areas of action-age-friendly environments, combating ageism, integrated care and long-term care. These are all morally laudable, but incomplete, prescriptions.

Like the EU report on defeating cancer, what is missing from the World Health Organization's action plan is undertaking the committed action to develop an applied gerontological intervention to increase the human healthspan. Geroscience is an integral element of public health for today's ageing populations. Redressing the imbalance between the research funding invested in tackling specific chronic diseases vs the most significant risk factor for chronic diseases is critical. The past half a century war on cancer reveals the limitations of continuing on the path of disease elimination for populations that are approaching the upper limits of the human lifespan.

Strategic innovations in preventative medicine are required if we hope to improve the healthspan of today's ageing populations. To make serious headway in cancer prevention, we must target the most significant risk factor - biological ageing. Despite the limits facing behaviour control, there is good reason for optimism that the development of an applied gerontological intervention could help us achieve the important goal of rate control. Age retardation would ensure we improve the quality of life for older people vs simply preventing death by helping older populations manage multi-morbidity.

When President Nixon declared a "war on cancer" nearly 50 years ago, the success of the war was equated with disease elimination. That is a noble but unrealistic goal. Waging a war against an unrealistic goal is harmful for two reasons. Firstly, it means that large investments of public funds are invested into something that is not attainable (of the 200+ types of cancer, none have been cured or eliminated). Secondly, and more importantly, that investment in disease elimination imposed a hefty opportunity cost. Had those same funds been invested elsewhere, for example, targeting the ageing process itself, it could have yielded the population a much more significant health dividend. The primary challenge for today's ageing populations is not to eradicate cancer mortality but rather to increase the human healthspan.