Skip navigation
Forget the Blood of Teens
Article

Forget the Blood of Teens

This Pill Promises to Extend Life For a Nickel A Pop

Wired, 2017

auto-generated audio
auto-generated audio

Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Scientific
  • Eye Opening

Recommendation

Antiaging researcher Nir Barzilai wants to redefine the meaning of life extension: not simply more years, but more years of disease-free life, free of the suffering and expense of cancer, heart disease, dementia, and other scourges of old age. Barzilai calls it your “health span,” and he’s working to extend it by decades via an affordable generic drug currently in common use for diabetes. Science writer Sam Apple, writing for Wired, dives into the sometimes outlandish world of life extension and describes how one scientist hopes to make the dream reality for millions of Americans.

Take-Aways

  • Antiaging researcher Nir Barzilai is leading an effort to develop an affordable generic drug to delay and reduce the effects of aging.
  • Barzilai believes this drug could extend what he calls people’s “health span” – the years they remain disease-free – by decades.
  • The generic diabetes drug metformin shows promise to hold off many diseases that afflict people as they age, including cancer and dementia.

About the Author

Sam Apple teaches science writing at the University of Pennsylvania.