Inside the longevity boom: Where science ends and fantasy begins

ISTANBUL

If the 21st century has a modern fairy tale, it is the promise of escaping aging and decline. Once confined to fiction, that dream is now being pursued in laboratories, startups and private clinics, fueled by Silicon Valley wealth and technological optimism.

By 2026, longevity has evolved from the obsession of eccentric billionaires into a global industry, increasingly focused on extending the productive years of aging populations.

In 2024 alone, the sector attracted $8.49 billion in global investment – a 220% jump from the previous year, according to the 2024 Annual Longevity Investment Report. By 2030, the market is expected to reach $8 trillion, according to Swiss bank UBS.

The field has moved beyond supplements and wellness into what some companies call “bio-insurance,” banking youthful cells for future regenerative use – turning youth itself into a speculative asset.

“It is pseudoscience,” Matt Kaeberlein, a longevity expert and CEO of Optispan, told Anadolu, referring to many claims circulating outside scientific research.

According to Kaeberlein, the problem is not longevity research itself, but the way speculative ideas are increasingly marketed as proven biological solutions.

Over the past 25 years, he said, scientists have made genuine progress in understanding the mechanisms of aging. However, he said there is a widening gap between what science can currently support and what is being promised publicly.

“I think the progress in many ways and the likelihood of major advances in human longevity have been overhyped,” he said.

He noted that no medical intervention has been proven to slow biological aging beyond well-established lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, sleep and social connection.

The gap between evidence and claims, he said, is most visible in the supplement industry and consumer-facing “biological age” tests, where offerings often drift from speculation into what he described as “pure snake oil.”

“People are talking about all these different biological age tests. None of them measure biological age,” he said.

And when it comes to celebrity self-experimenters, his skepticism sharpens.

“People like Bryan Johnson are using them to justify various things that he does, which is all just nonsense. It's not scientifically valid,” he said.

Johnson, the tech entrepreneur behind Project Blueprint and known for his “Don’t die” motto, has drawn widespread attention for his extreme anti-aging experiments.

He has spent millions on supplements, undergoes unproven therapies – including plasma infusions from his son – and tracks his health intensively.

Johnson has publicly stated that advances in medicine and artificial intelligence could one day make death optional.

‘People are living longer, but sicker’

Valter D. Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, shares the skepticism toward shortcuts, but from a different perspective.

For Longo, the core failure of modern longevity culture is its fixation on lifespan rather than healthspan.

“You are already the result of three and a half billion years of evolution,” Longo told Anadolu. “Every time you introduce something new into the body – whether it’s DNA, drugs or extreme dietary interventions – there will be positives and negatives. The chance that you dramatically improve on that system without consequences is extremely slim.”

Italy, often cited as a model of longevity, offers a cautionary example.

“In the last 20 years, Italy gained four years of life expectancy but lost two years of healthy life,” Longo said. “People are living longer, but sicker.”

Between 2015 and 2050, the proportion of the world's population over 60 years will nearly double from 12% to 22%, according to the World Health Organization.

The economic consequences are substantial.

In the United States, nearly 18% of GDP is spent on healthcare, much of it devoted to managing chronic disease rather than preventing it.

“That system is unsustainable,” Longo said. “We’re keeping people alive, but we’re keeping them sick.”

True progress, he argued, lies in extending the years people live without serious illness.

Longo also cautioned against longevity shortcuts, particularly extreme fasting popularized by wellness culture.

“Most fasting practices are bad for you,” he said, stressing that only a few methods show benefits when backed by rigorous evidence.

The lack of standardization in nutrition is also adding to the problem, he said.

“A dietician might have three years of training. That doesn’t mean they should be inventing new longevity diets,” Longo said.

Money and immortality

The booming longevity industry reflects a deep human fear of death, according to Sheldon Solomon, professor of social psychology at Skidmore College.

“Since antiquity, humans have been trying to avoid death,” he told Anadolu, adding that extending life can reduce death anxiety by creating the illusion of distance from mortality.

“I often tell people in the United States to look at the back of a dollar bill, where there's a picture of a pyramid with a little eyeball floating on top of it, and that's an ancient Egyptian symbol for immortality,” he said.

What sets today apart, he added, is the scale of money fueling the longevity race.

He said the longevity boom is “inextricably connected to economic inequality” and runs on “the myth that there is a technological solution to every human concern.”

In a world where expensive cosmetic procedures promise to slow or reverse the signs of aging, he said wealth itself becomes a psychological shield against mortality.

“There’s an association between having money and living longer. Money itself becomes a symbolic form of immortality,” he emphasized.

Indeed, even at the highest levels of power, the desire to conquer aging and death has become a topic of discussion.

A conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, caught on a hot mic last year, revealed this fascination.

“Human organs can be constantly transplanted, to the extent that people can get younger, perhaps even immortal,” Putin told Xi.

“By the end of this century, people may live to 150 years old,” Xi replied.

Promise and limits of longevity science

Along with the hype, credible longevity research is steadily advancing. Several FDA-approved drugs, including GLP-1 agonists originally developed for diabetes and metabolic disorders, are now being investigated for their potential to influence aging-related pathways.

Kaeberlein predicts that within a decade, the first FDA-approved aging intervention, likely first in companion animals, could arrive, though current trials are small and focused on safety rather than effectiveness.

One of the most closely watched avenues is partial epigenetic reprogramming, which aims to reset cellular markers of aging without erasing cell identity. Companies including Altos Labs, backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Life Biosciences are pioneering this approach.

Recently, Life Biosciences received FDA clearance for its new investigational drug, ER-100, marking the world’s first human clinical trial for a partial epigenetic reprogramming therapy. The trial targets optic neuropathies, including glaucoma, testing whether the eye’s cells can be “rejuvenated” to restore vision.

“If that clinical trial is successful, that’s a big deal,” Kaeberlein said. “It would be the first example of a rejuvenation technology deployed in humans that directly targets the biology of aging.”

Beyond cellular therapies, Kaeberlein sees the most immediate impact coming from AI-driven personalized medicine.

By analyzing biomarkers and individual health data, these tools could guide lifestyle, supplement and pharmaceutical choices to help maintain health and slow aging.

Within a few years, he said, AI-powered “healthspan agents” may offer high-quality, proactive longevity care at a “relatively low cost.”