How much will life extension therapies cost?

How much will life extension therapies cost?

Aubrey de Grey (Chairman, Methuselah Foundation) gives expert video advice on: What are 'life extension therapies'?; When did life extension studies first begin?; What is 'rejuvenation therapy'? and more...

When really effective rejuvenation therapies come along-- able to actually take a middle aged person and rejuvenate them back to, let's say thirty or forty years old, and when they've aged again to sixty and to do it again, and so on-- when these therapy's come along, they are probably going to be very expensive. Just like any technology is when it first comes along. Another thing however to remember is they are going to be very risky and experimental. There probably not going to be very safe at all, because if people are going to be so desperate to get their hands on them, that sort of regulatory structure that we have now will probably not actually be applied to them. So in some terms it doesn't matter if they'll be expensive. The big reason why it doesn't matter so much, is that the pressure to improve these therapies will be enormous through society. There will be enormous amount of money being spent on refining them. And that will apply not only to the safety, but also to the cost. People will figure out ways to make them more convenient, and more comprehensive, and safer and therefore cheaper. And so I expect that it will be something that will not be appreciatively more expensive than standard care for the elderly at the moment. And of course it will ultimately be more effective, because it won't be keeping people alive in a frail state for an extra couple of years. It will be keeping people alive in a youthful state for an arbitrary amount of time.