Thanks for submitting the interesting article, and thanks for the interesting comments already posted by various HN participants. I'll respond generally to those in this comment.<p>From the article: "A study published last year by Danish researchers estimated that more than half of all babies born in wealthy nations since the year 2000 will live to see their 100th birthdays."<p>I had the privilege of reading that study, "Ageing populations: the challenges ahead," Lancet. 2009 October 3; 374(9696): 1196–1208. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61460-4<p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2810516/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2810516/</a><p>and then discussing it with one of the collaborators of a study author in a "journal club" at my alma mater university. Detailed studies of life expectancy at advanced age in a variety of countries show that various lifestyle changes and other changes result in a worldwide trend of increasing lifespan, such that "Very long lives are not the distant privilege of remote future generations—very long lives are the probable destiny of most people alive now in developed countries."<p>The top-ranked HN comment as I post my comment here says, "In essence the FDA only approves medicines for specific, recognized, named diseases. Therefore you cannot legally, commercially treat aging in the US, as aging is not recognized by the FDA as a disease, and there is no path towards reversing that situation." The comment has already been challenged by a knowledgeable participant here as not fully accurate,<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3968515" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3968515</a><p>and in any event is not relevant to the worldwide research effort (exemplified by the study I have linked here) into the worldwide trend of longer lifespans in the developed world, because the FDA regulates medical treatments only in the United States. (I have lived in a developed country other than the United States, and am well aware that many treatments that are not approved in the United States are prescribed by physicians in other countries and researched by researchers in other countries.) The FDA is not shortening lifespans in the United States, despite what some advocacy organizations say to the contrary.<p>I have had multiple ancestors who were born in the 1800s live into their nineties. And my wife's ancestors, born in a poor country then in the undeveloped world, managed to have quite long lifespans. So we are accustomed in our family to thinking about the implications of long lifespans. Oddly, heritability of longevity is actually LOWER than the heritability of most measurable human characteristics.<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/health/31age.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/health/31age.html?_r=1&...</a><p>It could be that anyone, even someone without much of a family history of long life span, might meet the prediction of the study linked above that a young person born after the year 2000 in a developed country is as likely as not to live to the age of 100.<p>Thus far we are making incremental progress, all over the world in a variety of human societies, increasing human lifespan and life expectancy at most ages. Meanwhile a number of forms of fundamental biological research are still just in their beginning stages. In particular, the issue of "missing heritability" in disease research<p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831613/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831613/</a><p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3059431/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3059431/</a><p>suggests that we have a long way to go to identify biological pathways in living human beings that make a difference in how long individual human beings live. The ongoing progress of science-based medicine<p><a href="http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/category/science-and-medicine/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/category/scien...</a><p>is slower than desirable partly because all human researchers, in whatever regulatory environment, struggle to overcome their own cognitive biases as they attempt to determine what treatments work in reducing all-cause mortality and morbidity. And the huge role of lifestyle factors in mortality and morbidity<p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2658866/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2658866/</a><p><a href="http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000058" rel="nofollow">http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...</a><p>suggests that as causation of disease and early death becomes more clear, we will not necessarily find that all human beings choose to reduce their risk of early death to the same degree.<p>To sum up, the submitted article was quite interesting. It reports, "There is now a "groundswell" of specialists in aging, says Dillin, who are lobbying the world's biggest drug regulator, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to consider redefining aging as a disease in its own right." If by "aging" those lobbying scientists mean "all-cause morbidity and mortality," that could be a good reality check on outcome studies of treatments for specific diseases. As it is now, people are living longer, year after year after year, and in some places they seem to be living to a healthier old age than ever before. Continuing that trend is a likely outcome of ongoing efforts both to evaluate disease treatments more scientifically and to understand better at a fundamental level how human physiology works.