My reporting has also made me realize that the current interest in longevity reaches beyond social media influencers and wellness centers. Longevity clinics are growing in number, and there’s been a glut of documentaries about living longer or even forever.
At the same time, powerful people who influence state laws, giant federal funding budgets, and even national health policy are prioritizing the search for treatments that slow or reverse aging. The longevity community was thrilled when longtime supporter Jim O’Neill was made deputy secretary of health and human services last year. Other members of Trump’s administration, including Oz, have spoken about longevity too. “It seems that now there is the most pro-longevity administration in American history,” Gries told me.
I recently spoke to Alicia Jackson, the new director of ARPA-H. The agency, established in 2022 under Joe Biden’s presidency, funds “breakthrough” biomedical research. And it appears to have a new focus on longevity. Jackson previously founded and led Evernow, a company focused on “health and longevity for every woman.”
“There’s a lot of interesting technologies, but they all kind of come back to the same thing: Could we extend life years?” she told me over a Zoom call a few weeks ago. She added that her agency had “incredible support” from “the very top of HHS.” I asked if she was referring to Jim O’Neill. “Yeah,” she said. She wouldn’t go into the specifics.
Gries is right: There is a lot of support for advances in longevity treatments, and some of it is coming from influential people in positions of power. Perhaps the field really is poised for a breakthrough.
And that’s what makes this field so fascinating to cover. Despite the occasional weirdness.
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.
