About LMRF - The Broader Picture

LMRF currently helps target the following ill effects of the aging process:

• what may be the sole precursor of atherosclerosis;
• damage to mitochondrial DNA that, ultimately, turns a small proportion of the body's cells into free radical generators, accelerating the ill effects of aging;

• age-related macular degeneration (ARMD).

But these novel, preventative approaches to age-related pathology are a subset of a larger set of strategies to treat the ill effects of aging, not as distinct disorders, but rather as a collection of syndromes tied together by a few common threads.

• 100,000 of the 150,000 deaths each day worldwide are age-related; in the U.S., the proportion is over 90%;
• The average period of disability before death in the U.S. and Britain is 3.5 years or more;
• The U.S. spends about $80 billion per year on nursing-home care, nearly half paid by taxpayers through Medicaid;
• Over 60% of Americans would rather not live to 100 (health reasons: 46%; financial reasons: 38%);
• Nevertheless, 85+ is the fastest-growing demographic in the U.S..

See more on the effects of longer lives without proportionate improvements in health retention on this recent Frontline program.

Paradoxically, humans' living longer can mean suffering longer. 50-year-olds commonly want to live to 100 -- and even expect it, in a much higher proportion than is warranted by current mortality trends. Those over 85 generally don't, but would reconsider if they regained the health of youth so that, if money ran low, they could still go back to work.

If it is determined that there are just a few intermediaries between the aging process and age-related pathology, then perhaps the former need not be stopped, nor the latter cured, to control the ill effects of aging. A list of seven such intermediaries developed over the past 10 years by biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey and others seems to be the complete list of such intermediaries causing age-related pathology in a normal human lifetime.

De Grey and others have developed a blueprint for addressing these seven intermediaries, called SENS. The first two initiatives to develop the seven strategies of SENS are LysoSENS and MitoSENS, both which LMRF helps fund.

LMRF therefore is not just supporting a disease-by-disease effort, but also what may prove to be an effective assault on the full bulk of the ill effects of aging. In fact, treating age-related pathology as a single targeted entity may be easier than addressing the large catalog of such diseases one by one.

By addressing age-related pathology in this preventative way,

• reversing the ill effects of aging may prove far lower hanging fruit than even finding a strategy to stop aging, and
• gains in longevity would be preceded by -- and driven by -- gains in quality of health.