Note: This is a translation. Only the German version of the election program is authoritative.
We are running in the European election to advocate the faster development of rejuvenation therapies that repair the damage of aging and with which people can live healthily for thousands of years. Diseases of old age and age-related death would then no longer be an inevitable fate. To this end, 40 billion euros of the EU budget per year are to be invested in rejuvenation research in addition to the 9th research framework program "Horizon Europe".
The European Union is to be established as one of the leading hubs for technologies for healthy life extension and for their export. With the financial resources called for, a European Institute for Rejuvenation Research is to be created that deals with the development of medicine to eliminate age-related damage. As part of this institute, new public research facilities are to be built and operated in the European Union. Furthermore, the relevant departments at universities (for example medicine, biochemistry, bioinformatics and molecular biology) are to be expanded so that they can train more people in these fields.
We have the ethical responsibility to implement the fundamental right to life enshrined in the Basic Law for all people, regardless of their age, as quickly as possible and to actively promote the opportunities for realizing a long, healthy life. We have this responsibility especially in view of the more than 100,000 age-related deaths every day and the suffering that precedes them. In addition, the faster development of the therapies is also very important economically because of the currently enormous costs of illness and care at the end of life. Rejuvenation therapies could relieve the pension and health care systems, remedy the shortage of skilled workers, strengthen the European economy and pave Europe's way to a flourishing longevity industry.
We call for a progressive and forward-looking research policy that is based on scientific progress, social responsibility and global cooperation and that makes rejuvenation research one of the top priorities. Beyond that, we want to raise awareness of the challenges of an aging society and of the aging process, and in particular draw attention to the opportunity to overcome these challenges with rejuvenation medicine.
Explanation
Aging causes suffering and death
Currently, more than 100,000 people die every day of aging or of diseases associated with it such as cancer, Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases.1 Aging thus costs more than one human life per second.
Curing aging with the repair approach and enabling an indefinitely long healthy life: with appropriate funding, a good chance of implementation within 15 years
In aging research, the so-called repair approach has become established in recent years. During aging, harmful changes arise in the body through normal metabolism, among other things, which above a certain amount lead to diseases of old age and to age-related death. Until now, attempts have been made to fight diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer's one by one. Now researchers want to repair, at the molecular and cellular level, the damage that accumulates in the aging process. This could make it possible in the future to biologically rejuvenate people and prevent all diseases of old age.
After a rejuvenation, people would continue to age, since damage would continue to accumulate. This is where the concept of longevity escape velocity comes into play, however. According to aging researcher Dr. Aubrey de Grey, we have a 50% chance of developing, within the next 12-15 years, medicine that gives a 60-year-old 20 additional years of life. Within these 20 years, however, better medicine will probably be developed that lets us live a few decades longer again, and so on. The idea, then, is to continuously improve therapies and to apply them again and again to the same people in order to repair the damage more and more thoroughly. From a certain point on, life expectancy rises on average by at least one year for every year that passes.
If we achieve this, people could live indefinitely. At the same time, they would have the appearance and the physical and mental health and fitness of a young adult. Aging would thus be curable.
The question is not so much whether we can or should develop this medicine, but rather how quickly this development progresses and when we want to benefit from this medicine.
The repair approach is relatively easy to implement
Reversing aging through the repair approach should be much easier to implement than, for example, slowing down aging by intervening in metabolism. This is because metabolism is very complex and is not yet sufficiently understood.
To implement the repair approach, you do not necessarily need to understand metabolism; you only need to know the damage and how it can be repaired.
All damage can be divided into a manageable number of categories. Such categories are, for example, mitochondrial mutations, waste products inside and outside the cells, or crosslinks in the extracellular matrix. It can be assumed that all types of damage are already known. To repair the damage, approaches such as stem cell therapies, tissue engineering, senolytics, antibody therapies, enzymes from soil bacteria and cellular reprogramming are being pursued, among others.
The scientific publication "The Hallmarks of Aging", which describes the repair approach, is the most cited publication in the field of aging research of the last decade. Numerous startups, research institutes and university research groups are already working on implementing this approach, but unfortunately nowhere near enough yet.
More and more well-known, renowned and influential individuals and organizations are also investing large sums in aging research. For example, Google founded the company Calico, which wants to cure aging. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently invested in the company Retro Biosciences, which also tackles aging. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife want to use their organization CZI to help cure, prevent or manage all diseases by the end of the century, and German web.de founder Michael Greve is investing several hundred million euros through his company Kizoo in implementing the repair approach.
Implementing the repair approach, however, means a great deal of work, since there are thousands of different kinds of damage and therefore a great many different therapies have to be developed. That is why we demand that the EU invest considerably more in implementing this approach.
Cryonics as an additional option
For people who are already too old to benefit from rejuvenation therapies, or who die of other causes, cryonics is an option. In cryonics, the body is gradually cooled after the declaration of death and then stored at -196°C in liquid nitrogen. The goal is to preserve the structure of the body (especially of the brain, in order to retain memory, personality and consciousness) long enough until future technologies make it possible to rewarm and revive the person and to cure their cause of death, for example old age.
Cryopreservation is also used today in reproductive medicine, for example to freeze fertilized egg cells. In the future, the longer-term storage of artificially produced organs could solve the global problem of organ shortage. The cryopreservation of placental tissue after birth offers the possibility of isolating stem cells when needed and using them for treatments of the child, the family or other patients.
That is why greater funding of research in the field of cryopreservation would also make sense.
Concerns and objections regarding rejuvenation therapies bear no comparison to today's suffering caused by aging
Curing aging can give rise to new problems. However, every invention and every exploration of new approaches holds opportunities as well as risks. We are of the opinion that the societal risks should not stop us from developing more quickly the rejuvenation medicine that can solve the humanitarian problem of aging. Instead, we should be open to the challenge of solving future societal problems that could accompany rejuvenation medicine, and engage in more discussion with one another about them.
For almost all problems that are mentioned in connection with a significant extension of life, there are in fact already good approaches to solutions. Many fear, for example, that overpopulation will result. However, calculations show that in a scenario without age-related death the population grows much more slowly than one would intuitively assume. Since rejuvenation therapies will also postpone menopause, women would also have the chance to have children much later, for example in order to devote themselves to their careers first. This will probably slow down population growth even further.
The problem with overpopulation is not that there is too little space, but environmental pollution and how we use resources. New technologies in food production, power generation and other areas are expected to significantly increase the carrying capacity of the Earth in the foreseeable future. These include, among others, renewable energy, desalination plants, lab-grown meat, vertical farming, algae farms, 3D printing, nuclear fusion and synthetic fuels.
Moreover, the societal challenges that come with rejuvenation therapies only arise gradually. We would probably have several centuries to find solutions. It would be immoral to decide today, on the basis of speculation about problems of a distant future, not to develop life-saving medicine as quickly as possible.
Another point is that the problems that might arise from rejuvenation therapies bear no comparison to the current problem of more than 100,000 deaths per day from aging. They are nowhere near as big and could very likely be solved, so they cannot be an argument for not accelerating the development of effective medicine against aging. Conversely, in an ageless world we would not solve these problems by inventing and introducing aging and all the diseases associated with it either.
Benefits of rejuvenation research at the individual level
By promoting the development of rejuvenation therapies, people would probably have the opportunity and free choice to use them sooner. People who decide to use rejuvenation therapies could benefit from the combination of youthful vigor and life experience, educate themselves in many different fields, bring new ideas into society, spend more time with family and friends and also get to know their great-great-great-grandchildren.
Strengthening the health care system and lower health care spending
Currently, the costs of illness in old age account for a considerable share of total expenditure in the health care system, since age-related diseases and health problems require comprehensive medical care.2 With the availability of rejuvenation therapies, health care spending will be greatly reduced, since fewer care costs will be incurred and fewer expensive treatments for individual diseases of old age will be needed.
Some renowned economists estimate that even a slowing of aging that increases life expectancy by just one year has an economic value of several trillion dollars for the USA over a period of a few decades.3, 4
Intensified research on therapies against aging will also benefit other medical fields. On the one hand, it will allow us to learn new things faster about the mechanisms that take place in our bodies. On the other hand, in the course of developing rejuvenation medicine we will improve methods and technologies for diagnosing and treating other health problems as well. One example is the CRISPR/Cas system known as gene scissors, with which all hereditary diseases can probably be cured in the future.
The savings in the health care system make it possible to use these resources for other purposes, for example to improve quality of life, for personal development or for societal purposes.
Furthermore, the savings in health care spending could help to reduce the burden on public health care systems and thereby improve access to health care for everyone. Through a more efficient use of health care resources, more people could benefit from high-quality medical care.
Further economic and social benefits of rejuvenation therapies
In pension policy and with regard to the problem of demographic change, rejuvenation therapies could offer a revolutionary solution. By living longer and healthier lives, people would have the opportunity to work longer and could contribute to relieving the financial burden on social security systems. This would ease the pressure on young generations and stabilize the economy.
Furthermore, extending the working capacity of older people could help to counteract the shortage of skilled workers. By retaining and using the knowledge and experience of older employees, companies could benefit from a broader and more diverse workforce, which would increase productivity.
The introduction of rejuvenation therapies could fundamentally change the world of work and every individual's options for shaping their life. Currently, a common life course is to spend the first 25% of life in education, then 50% working and finally 25% being ill. The availability of rejuvenation therapies would break this dynamic.
A longer lifespan would allow people to take several years of vacation in between, return to phases of education or embark on new career paths. In addition, artificial intelligence and automation will probably eliminate many unpleasant tasks.
Strengthening global cooperation in biomedical research through better regulation of European health data
The European Union is currently the best place in the world for cooperation in scientific research on healthy life extension. It has a considerable number of medical researchers, health care staff and doctors - and, compared to other regions, a wealth of available health data. In addition, there are strict rules on how this data may be handled in order to prevent data misuse (General Data Protection Regulation).
The regulations on the European Health Data Space (EHDS) are about to be adopted. An overwhelming majority of EU citizens support the sharing of data for the common good, for example for medical research. When they are against it, it is usually because they fear that their data will be used against them or for the profit of private companies.5 For this reason, some key concepts of the EHDS are particularly important, for example that health data may only be used for medical care and research, may not be sold and must be kept in "altruistic databases" (run by non-profit organizations). In addition, the best possible anonymization or pseudonymization of the data must be available.
For the handling of medical data, significantly better regulations are needed. One example is the acceleration of research based on health data through less bureaucracy, faster approvals, simpler consent forms and so on. Also helpful would be a standardization of medical records and biobanks as in the United Kingdom, as well as of the way in which citizens in Finland share their data. In the Finnish system (opt-out), all stored data can be accessed in anonymized or pseudonymized form for approved research projects, provided the patient has not filed an objection. In other countries, it is exactly the other way around: in order to access data, the patient must have given explicit consent.
In our view, it should be easier especially for older people to take part in clinical trials. One possibility would be a requirement (with some exceptions) that at least 25% of study participants be older than 65. We could prohibit an upper age limit for volunteers in clinical trials.
In our opinion, all future clinical trials should be required to store their data in databases and to make it available for research. In science, it is not only the publication of "positive" results that matters, but equally or even more so the publication of "negative" results. After all, science makes progress by learning from mistakes, that is, by "closing doors."
Furthermore, we consider it crucial to make the research results that are made possible by citizens' data available to all citizens as well. Patents arising on this basis should be strictly regulated. Private companies may use the data but must be transparent about how they use it.
The rapid advances in artificial intelligence make it possible to use data systematically to advance rejuvenation research. For example, instead of personal data, we can take advantage of synthetic data that can no longer be traced back to the original data. This ensures patients' data privacy. A promising approach is the combination of human intelligence and serendipity (the chance observation of effects that one was not originally looking for) with artificial intelligence and the detection of weak signals. (An example of the latter is the detection of a slight but steady increase in the number of cases of a rare disease in a particular region. This could be a clue for the early detection of potential epidemics or for the investigation of risk factors.)
A European Institute for Rejuvenation Research
We advocate the establishment of a European Institute for Rejuvenation Research. For this purpose, on the one hand, a new large central research campus is to be built. On the other hand, smaller research facilities are to be set up across the EU as part of the institute. In these facilities, research groups are to work on therapies against the various kinds of damage of aging.
This institute is to inform the general public regularly and extensively, in the form of events, about the current state of rejuvenation research and about the rejuvenating measures currently available. In addition, it is to provide a website as an independent source of information and point of contact for this topic.
The institute is also to offer further training opportunities for scientists and medical professionals in the field of rejuvenation research.
Strengthening Europe as a location for research and business through rejuvenation research
Europe has the potential to become a global pioneer in rejuvenation research. Since all people worldwide age and need these therapies, Europe could export knowledge and medicine in the future.
The creation of an attractive research environment through targeted investment in research infrastructure, as well as the promotion of interdisciplinary cooperation in the field of rejuvenation research, can strengthen Europe as a business location and pave the way for a flourishing longevity industry.
Vote for us in the European election
Even with just one seat in the European Parliament, we can do public outreach much more effectively and show the major parties how important our issue is. Vote for us for the faster development of rejuvenation medicine!
Sources:
1: GBD 2017 Causes of Death Collaborators. Global, regional, and national age-sex-specific mortality for 282 causes of death in 195 countries and territories, 1980-2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. Lancet. 2018 Nov 10, 392: 1736-88. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)32203-7. (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32203-7/fulltext)
2: Diernberger K, Luta X, Bowden J, Fallon M, Droney J, Lemmon E, Gray E, Marti J, Hall P. Healthcare use and costs in the last year of life: a national population data linkage study. BMJ Support Palliat Care. 2021 Feb 12: bmjspcare-2020-002708. doi: 10.1136/bmjspcare-2020-002708. (https://spcare.bmj.com/content/early/2021/02/11/bmjspcare-2020-002708)
3: Scott AJ, Ellison M, Sinclair DA. The economic value of targeting aging. Nat Aging. 2021 Jul; (7): 616-623. doi: 10.1038/s43587-021-00080-0. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-021-00080-0)
4: Goldman DP, Cutler D, Rowe JW, Michaud PC, Sullivan J, Peneva D, Olshansky SJ. Substantial health and economic returns from delayed aging may warrant a new focus for medical research. Health Aff (Millwood). 2013 Oct; 32(10): 1698-705. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2013.0052. (https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2013.0052)
5: Kalkman S, van Delden J, Banerjee A, Tyl B, Mostert M, van Thiel G. Patients' and public views and attitudes towards the sharing of health data for research: a narrative review of the empirical evidence. J Med Ethics. 2022 Jan; 48(1): 3-13. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2019-105651. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8717474/)