Consensus recommendation to immediately expand research on extending healthy human lifespans.

The Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation (LEVF) has welcomed the publication today of the Dublin Longevity Declaration. This Declaration calls on governments, funding agencies and the public to intensify their support for the promising interventional ideas that exist to fight age-related suffering and disease, and for the generation and exploration of further ways to extend healthy lifespan.

So named because the ideas for the Dublin Longevity Declaration were discussed with speakers in the run-up to the Longevity Summit Dublin held in August 2023, where the forthcoming launch of the Declaration was also first announced, the Declaration has already been signed by a global group of more than 50 leading longevity scientists. Signatories include George Church, Eric Verdin, David Sinclair, Aubrey de Grey, Brian Kennedy, María Blasco, Vadim Gladyshev, Andrea Maier, Nir Barzilai, Matt Kaeberlein, Andrew Steele, João Pedro de Magalhães, Joanna Bensz, Peter Fedichev, Morten Scheibye-Knudsen, Bill Andrews, Alex Zhavoronkov, Thomas Rando and Steven Austad.

The Declaration expresses a consensus statement from longevity scientists that aging is not inevitable, and that there are early scientific results suggesting that the biological age of an individual is modifiable.

Longevity.Technology: The questions of why humans age and what we can do about it – two of the biggest questions in human biology – have now reached the mainstream, but the Declaration signatories wish to accelerate public and financial support that is specifically focused specifically on the field of longevity medicine, and by doing so, reap the human, societal and economic benefits of progress in combating age-related disease.

The Declaration’s creation was galvanized by the idea that the status quo is unsustainable its originators offer the example of the “the near exhaustion of funding for Medicare and the millions of excess deaths that would be expected following a 10% reduction in payments.”

The signatories hope that by achieving a much better control of aging, society would undergo a dramatic change, with accessible, expanded life quality, healthcare models shifted towards prevention, repair and rejuvenation, rather than symptom control, and longer, more productive lifespans. They point to research that indicates that a five-year extension in human healthspan, with equitable access for all people, would save trillions per year in healthcare costs, provide extra life quality across the entire population and ameliorate the demographic challenges that are happening in the first half of this century [1].

Dr de Grey led the effort to create and gain consensus for the Declaration, along with primary author Dr Brian Kennedy, Director of the Centre for Healthy Longevity and Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Physiology at the National University of Singapore, and Martin O’Dea, founding LEVF Board Member.

“We wanted to put this out there because everyone knows aging is bad, everyone says it’s bad, but nobody does anything about it,” said de Grey. “Like bad weather – people are stuck in the assumption that nothing can be done, even if we try. We wanted to put that assumption to rest.”

“Optimism about a better future drives us still, and one way to move forward is to answer the big questions in biology,” said Kennedy. “The grand challenge of aging is foremost among these.”

“The LEV Foundation wholeheartedly encourages anyone who supports the message of the Declaration to add their signature, via DublinLongevityDeclaration.org, and to urge others to do the same,” said Martin O’Dea. “We believe that demonstrating both expert consensus and broad public support for the extension of healthy lifespans will have the greatest impact in swaying policymakers and institutions to acknowledge and align with the paradigm shift now taking root across medical science.”

[1] https://dublinlongevitydeclaration.org/