What role does government play in the study of aging?

What role does government play in the study of aging?

The role of the government in working on combating aging has so far been very slight. And I think that's no surprise, because at the moment there is, of course, still a great deal of ambivalence in society as to whether defeating aging, or even combating aging, would be a good thing. People on the one hand know how horrible aging is, but on the other hand they have had to live with it for so many millennia, through the whole of civilization, that we've come to have a degree of irrationality about aging. And so it's not obvious that there are really any votes in combating aging at the moment and spending taxpayer money on it. And for that reason, it's pretty tricky to get government to put serious money into it.