<story><title>A $3B bet on finding the fountain of youth</title><url>https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/a-3bn-bet-on-finding-the-fountain-of-youth/21807244</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fairity</author><text>I wish our brightest minds were all working in areas like this instead of social apps and advertising.  Is there even any doubt that with a better understanding of biology we could meaningfully prolong the human lifespan?  What are we doing working on apps lol.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mdavis6890</author><text>The problem is that anything related to the human body is super-heavily regulated, which creates a ton of friction and risk to doing anything innovative.&lt;p&gt;I think the folks that would get very excited about working on the problem of aging would not be excited about the amount of regulatory bureaucracy (trying to find a non-judgmental word to use there) that necessarily goes along with it.&lt;p&gt;In fact I think that the reason that so much innovation and wealth creation is concentrated in things which such dubious social benefit is exactly that it isn&amp;#x27;t regulated, because it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter. If it matters and is important, it becomes regulated, which slows and discourages innovation and the people who want to innovate.</text></comment>
<story><title>A $3B bet on finding the fountain of youth</title><url>https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/a-3bn-bet-on-finding-the-fountain-of-youth/21807244</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fairity</author><text>I wish our brightest minds were all working in areas like this instead of social apps and advertising.  Is there even any doubt that with a better understanding of biology we could meaningfully prolong the human lifespan?  What are we doing working on apps lol.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>grishka</author><text>So how can I, as a software developer, meaningfully contribute to this area? I would very much prefer to live forever.</text></comment>