EXPONENTIAL BIOGERONTOLOGY

EXPONENTIAL BIOGERONTOLOGY. The 2010s were a decade of drug breakthroughs.

Exponential progress is always unexpected but rarely acknowledged after it has happened. The LA Times article linked in the title describes the first decade of this century as having seen “pretty stunning” medical progress.

Despite the word “drug” in the title of the article, the first category of breakthroughs described is “cell therapies.” Personally, I wouldn’t describe cell therapies as drugs, though it’s not uncommon to do so. Still, the article is correct regarding progress in cell therapies, though it doesn’t mention the most important ongoing trials involving cells.

The second category, gene therapies, is also a critically important field of medicine that has seen stunning progress. I suppose this field might be included under the category of “drugs” as well, but I predict that we’ll stop referring to gene therapies as drugs in the relatively near future when they begin to be used for anti-aging purposes.

This confusion of terminology matters because it reflects the public’s and the regulatory system’s inability to keep up with scientific progress. Regardless, that confusion will grow because we’re headed up the “head” of the hockey stick exponential growth curve so the gap between science and societal recognition will continue to grow.

The best evidence is that scientists from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and elsewhere now predict age reversal in the relatively near future. The first will probably be examples of extragenomic protein therapies to repair age-related declines of signalling molecules.

Here, courtesy of Wikipedia, is a graphic representation of exponential growth in green. Psychologically, we expect linear growth.