A major goal of ours is to provide objective & quantifiable biomarkers and clear success criteria for longevity clinical trials.
One reason is because without them it’s impossible to measure progress for the longevity field. Everyone wants to know “How soon will a reliable treatment be available?” You’ll find no shortage of expert commentary about development timelines for development of new drugs, or for development of drugs that reliably reverse aging. These can be well known and respectable scientists who are forced to make completely wild guesstimates by journalists, or by their board of directors!
As a field, we’re clearly making progress however when hearing estimates about specific timelines for when safe and effective regenerative medicine will become available, it’s prudent to note the Maes-Garreau Tendency. Often most favorable predictions about future technology will fall within the Maes-Garreau Point, which is defined as the latest possible date a prediction can come true and still remain in the lifetime of the person making it.
This can lead to wildly optimistic predictions, and is probably due to the fact that people simply find predictions a lot more exciting if they’ll be around to personally experience the results of them. That said, there have also been many notably pessimistic views, especially with regards to technology and the predicted inability of humans to harness it. For example:
“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible,” –
Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895
“There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.”
-Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923
One simple piece of advice is that given by Vinod Khosla, a founder of Oracle Corp., a successful venture capitalist focusing on development of disruptive technologies. He says that you should essentially ignore the experts and create the future you want, stating “Trust in your instincts and trust in a lot of experimentation.”
Development of reliable new longevity medicines will indeed require lots of experimentation, and specifically the conduct of many rigorous longevity clinical trials. Are you enrolled in one? We hope so!
EXPERT COMMENTARY ON “EXPERT COMMENTARY”
“Trust But Verify and the Maes-Garreau Tendency”, n.d.,
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/12/the-maesgarreau-tendency.php.
“Vinod Khosla says get rid of experts and invent the future you want (video) | VentureBeat”,
n.d., http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/31/vinod-khosla-says-get-rid-of-experts-and-invent-the-future-you-want-video/?volt=0
