Well it’s official, Big Pharma is in the anti-aging game.
Yesterday’s news of GlaxoSmithKline buying anti-aging biotech
company Sirtris for a whopping 84% premium over the share price
marks the cloaked entry of big pharma into the anti-aging arena.
Of course they won’t or can’t admit that that is their goal –
they will say that is in service of treating age related diseases –
but this is the beginning of an inevitable trend that will result
in billions of dollars being poured into anti-aging research.
The FDA
does not consider aging a disease that requires treatment. This
has stemmed the flow of capital into this area and what has come in
has always been (and continues to be) under the very real guise of
treating diabetes, metabolic disorders and other diseases
associated with aging. This is about to change.
The demographic bubble of aging Baby boomers combined with a
growing class of seniors ahead of them already benefitting from
life expectancy rates that continue to approach the magical
threshold of one year of gain for every year that transpires
(Ronald Bailey
quotes Ray Kurzweil as putting the current number at three months
per year), will lead to an explosion of investment into this area.
(cont.)
This will happen in much the same way we’ve seen a dramatic
expansion of vc investment into alternative energy sources. These
were once a third rail that no one wanted to touch due in part to
social stigma, big oil money’s resistance and the perception that
progress would be long in the offing. Today, those same factions,
conservatives and big oil, are the loudest proponents and biggest
investors in this area. The same will hold true for anti-aging
technologies. In fact it’s likely to be an even bigger and swifter
transformation as nothing changes minds quicker than the sober
reality of ones impending mortality. Well, that and the opportunity
to make a buck.
For more on the prospects of longevity, see Positive Futurist
Dick Pelletier’s Futuretalk
posts including
this recent one.
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