* GLP-1s are expensive because of patents…but they’re actually quite cheap to produce, some are coming off-patent in the next few years…and I wonder, if a new, on-patent but fundamentally cheap drug turned out to be really useful for prevention, whether we should have some policy way around this…

I think this is right and, thinking about this some more, I’m kind-of surprised that they thought this might work?

(But probably worth a try—a low-cost*, fairly safe treatment, even if it only helped a bit, would be amazing, and we try too little low-risk speculative prevention in general!)

One could imagine using something with a really general mechanism and good safety for universal prevention… But yeah, it would be nice to be able to do some stratification…

Hopefully though this will help to quell some of the noise coming from diet gurus that Alzheimer’s disease can be slowed down or even reversed by drastic dietary changes, although I doubt it. 😩

Matt happened to be in Berlin so after we recorded we headed out for a (mostly longevity-appropriate) lunch and some sightseeing, and we had a great chat off-mic too. :)

Check out the full discussion in that video, or wherever you get your podcasts™.

There is no good technical reason for this—which presumably means Meta just wants constant access to your camera and microphone for…reasons?

Just another reason to ditch WhatsApp and install @signal.org!

I’ve added this to my article at steele.link/whatsapp

References:

2026 budget proposal: www.nia.nih.gov/about/budget...
2025 budget, including breakdown by Division: www.nia.nih.gov/about/budget...

If you’re American, now would be a great time to write to your representatives and tell them that, with 85% of deaths caused by ageing, we should be funding it to the tune of more than 60 cents per person per year.

It also risks the US falling behind internationally—China is investing huge amounts in biosciences, and this represents a huge albeit bittersweet opportunity for the UK and Europe to capitalize on their health data, institutions and talent to build what could be the world’s biggest industry.

Even if you think government funding is by definition inefficient, you should surely be willing to gamble a few dollars a year in case these mechanisms turn out to be important for scientific progress!

Public funding of aging biology is critical—many ideas we have to slow aging are either old, out-of-patent drugs which no company would ever run a trial for, or too long-term and speculative and need to be de-risked by government or philanthropy before commercialization.