I think the LessWrong post about the dog longevity company gave an incomplete summary of the evidence related to IGF-1 inhibitors and longevity. According to the post, Loyal (the company) was basically observing correlation (small dogs live longer than big dogs, and also have lower IGF-1) and assuming causation. But the post doesn't mention that a causal link between IGF-1 inhibition and longevity has been established and replicated in model organisms, including worms and mice:
Of course showing that a drug works in mice definitely doesn't guarantee that it'll work in dogs or humans (looks like IGF-1 inhibitors don't work to increase longevity in humans). There's even the meme where people append "IN MICE" to hyped-up science headlines to more accurately reflect the results they're reporting on. But still, I think this evidence is worth noting and the LessWrong post was incomplete without it.
Anyway I might write a longer post on this later, but I'm generally in favor of a right-to-try with medicine. I think it's good that the FDA is allowing sales of this drug. I forget where I heard this (maybe from an ACX post?) but it's kinda crazy that if a medicine definitely DOESN'T work, it's completely unregulated and freely accessible (homeopathy, essential oils, "alternative medicine"). But if a medicine actually MIGHT work, then it becomes very highly regulated.
I'm personally opposed to regulating dog medicine, though I hope that Loyal is forced to slap giant "NOT PROVED TO BE EFFECTIVE" labels *everywhere* on their product and their website.
As a general thing, I believe long life is correlated with not being a prey animal. You're likely to live longer if you have some of the following: large size, flight, communal living, or poison and possibly intelligence. Oh, and armor-- I forgot that on the first pass. I *knew* you can't optimize all of them at once-- especially flight and armor.
People are probably pretty well optimized for long life compared to any animal that's short-lived enough to be convenient to study.
Long life is correlated with low extrinsic mortality. Over evolutionary time periods lifespan tends to evolve such that intrinsic mortality (from aging) is balanced by extrinsic mortality (from disease, predation, etc). There simply is no evolutionary pressure to evolve long lifespans if most members of a species die of things that are not aging.
Huh. So doing most research on short lived species - because they're short lived and thus easy to work with - is likely to have low replicability for longevity because evolution already picked the lower hanging fruits for us.
This suggests we should focus on finding good metrics that work for humans and optimizing them as proxies. Like Bryan Johnson is doing, except he's doing it with a sample of one.
I think the LessWrong post about the dog longevity company gave an incomplete summary of the evidence related to IGF-1 inhibitors and longevity. According to the post, Loyal (the company) was basically observing correlation (small dogs live longer than big dogs, and also have lower IGF-1) and assuming causation. But the post doesn't mention that a causal link between IGF-1 inhibition and longevity has been established and replicated in model organisms, including worms and mice:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04805-5
Of course showing that a drug works in mice definitely doesn't guarantee that it'll work in dogs or humans (looks like IGF-1 inhibitors don't work to increase longevity in humans). There's even the meme where people append "IN MICE" to hyped-up science headlines to more accurately reflect the results they're reporting on. But still, I think this evidence is worth noting and the LessWrong post was incomplete without it.
Anyway I might write a longer post on this later, but I'm generally in favor of a right-to-try with medicine. I think it's good that the FDA is allowing sales of this drug. I forget where I heard this (maybe from an ACX post?) but it's kinda crazy that if a medicine definitely DOESN'T work, it's completely unregulated and freely accessible (homeopathy, essential oils, "alternative medicine"). But if a medicine actually MIGHT work, then it becomes very highly regulated.
Good catch on the LW post.
I'm personally opposed to regulating dog medicine, though I hope that Loyal is forced to slap giant "NOT PROVED TO BE EFFECTIVE" labels *everywhere* on their product and their website.
As a general thing, I believe long life is correlated with not being a prey animal. You're likely to live longer if you have some of the following: large size, flight, communal living, or poison and possibly intelligence. Oh, and armor-- I forgot that on the first pass. I *knew* you can't optimize all of them at once-- especially flight and armor.
People are probably pretty well optimized for long life compared to any animal that's short-lived enough to be convenient to study.
Long life is correlated with low extrinsic mortality. Over evolutionary time periods lifespan tends to evolve such that intrinsic mortality (from aging) is balanced by extrinsic mortality (from disease, predation, etc). There simply is no evolutionary pressure to evolve long lifespans if most members of a species die of things that are not aging.
Huh. So doing most research on short lived species - because they're short lived and thus easy to work with - is likely to have low replicability for longevity because evolution already picked the lower hanging fruits for us.
This suggests we should focus on finding good metrics that work for humans and optimizing them as proxies. Like Bryan Johnson is doing, except he's doing it with a sample of one.