Yes of course to deal with aging you must tackle the many age related illnesses. Ideally it's the reverse. If you can prevent or repair the effects of aging, t

Yes of course to deal with aging you must tackle the many age related illnesses. Ideally it's the reverse. If you can prevent or repair the effects of aging, those conditions become much less harmful. 25 year olds don't have heart attacks or get Alzheimer's. Why, for example does YC care enough about aging to want to find it in particular, rather than say, well any other major field of human health research? The payoff is potentially much greater. Curing all cancer would only increase life expectancy by 3.2 years, because if you don't die of cancer when you're 75 then you'll have a stroke at 78 (https://www.quora.com/If-we-cure-cancer-so-nobody-dies-of-cancer-how-much-would-that-extend-the-average-life-expectancy https://www.quora.com/If-we-cure-cancer-so-nobody-dies-of-ca...). Eliminating the negative effects of aging would add many more years, plus they would be of much higher quality. whilst being plausibly argued as being for the benefit of all humanity Aging is terrible for everyone, rich and poor. Arguably it's even worse for the poor; the increased medical expenses and decreased mobility and ability to work are much easier to deal with if you have several million dollars lying around.