Aging is important:
- Aging kills 100,000 people per day.
- 2/3 of all deaths are caused by aging.
- Trillions of dollars are spent annually on the diseases and disabilities of aging.
- Aging populations with lower percentages of working age adults threaten developed economies.
Aging is tractable:
- Aging is reducible to between 7 and 12 distinct biological causes, depending who you ask.
- Human trials for some interventions into aging, such as senolytic drugs, show promising results.
- Experiments in mice provide further evidence of tractability.
Aging is neglected:
- The very idea of curing aging is controversial to the point of taboo among most policymakers and scientists.
- The SENS Research Foundation, one of the leading organizations working on curing aging, has a budget of only a few million dollars per year.
- Some broadly publicized efforts to extend lifespans, such as Alphabet's Calico, focus on low-hanging fruit and not fundamental intervention in the root causes of aging.
Therefore, aging should be the 5th cause area that the effective altruism movement devotes its attention and resources to, joining global poverty, animal welfare, existential risk, and meta-EA.
I am surprised that the CEARCH research reached the conclusion that aging research is not cost effective, when research published in nature reached the conclusion that -
"We show that a slowdown in aging that increases life expectancy by 1 year is worth US$38 trillion, and by 10 years, US$367 trillion." (ref - https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-021-00080-0#Sec2 )
How can research that made it into one of the most reputable scientific journals reach such divergent conclusions?
Of course the question of how much money is needed to invest in the fundamental research to reach those outcomes is another question, yet when you are talking about benefits in the region of tens of trillions of dollars for a 1 year increase in life expectancy, it seems extremely premature to me to conclude that this would not be a cost effective investment for EA.
Additionally "De Grey, who was fired in 2021 and started his own research organization, later said that talent, not money, is the main barrier to progress." seems very weak to base an argument from an anecdote. I am certain if you ask any of the professors working on aging research whether there is a lack of talent to expand their research capacity, this would not be the limiting factor