Report on the fight against aging
The industry report is the map that will guide us on the shortest way to the desired result, helping us not waste time in vain to try all the side paths. As the proverb says, "look before you leap!"
The organizational part of the fight against aging is very complex. To make progress we need to understand how to organize the work, where to get funding, how to reach the scientists, to get support from policy makers and society, how to pick the optimal research directions and which laboratories are most likely to be able to solve the challenges...
Surprisingly, until now no one took the management of the fight against aging seriously. Most of the enthusiasts scrambled to battle without preparation. As a result, not only have we not cured ageing, but most people still think it's normal.
Why did it happen? One of the reasons is that the organizational complexity of not obvious to scientists. It is not discussed at ageing and gerontology conferences. As a rule, researchers and doctors don't have a management education. There are no industry reports describing the state of affairs.
We have approached the fight with aging trying to organise the work properly and effectively. We decided to begin with a comprehensive industry report describing the fight with aging. In it we describe who works in the field of aging — what people, organisations and projects there are, what are the main difficulties. We describe other similar projects, the external environment (including other stakeholders that scientists need to deal with — investors, politicians, social groups, bioethicists).
With this report we want to clarify the current situation in the fight against aging (organization of work, funding sources, potential political and social support, the best research directions...). This will enable us to understand where we are right now, as well as where we want to get (and how).
The report is being prepared by a research group of the "Science for life extension" foundation using help of experts from different fields. When finished, the report will be freely available online.
How the work on the report proceeds? Don't be surprised, but the key experts are not gerontologists (unlike with the scientific program to cure ageing). In fact, before scientists can get down to business, we need to prepare the conditions for their work. At the first stage our main task is to understand how to create the necessary conditions for the work of scientists, what is the best way to combine their existing ideas and projects, etc.
We want other people that are fighting aging, as well as other experts to share their experience and knowledge with us. We will add that to the report and as a result everybody will get things done more efficiently, and the project will be finished much earlier than without a report. Perhaps even decades earlier.
We hope that the report on the fight against aging will become the primary reference book for each gerontologist, policy maker and civil servant.
We invite experts to join us in writing and editing one or several sections of this report. This document is necessary to prevent mistakes that have already been made by others, to create a broad coalition to fight aging and create an organizational plan for the implementation of a program to cure aging.