When asking why more people aren't working on something that's high-risk & high-reward, it's best to look not at the goal itself, but rather how working on that

When asking why more people aren't working on something that's high-risk & high-reward, it's best to look not at the goal itself, but rather how working on that goal is rewarded for the participants. For example, I spent almost a decade working on nuclear fusion. In theory, the reward for success would be very high. However, the reward for a small success isn't amazing (basically running a long-term research project, similar to a tenured professorship). And very few people who work on fusion get to that point. Most end up as frustrated post-docs, trying to compete for limited funding with researchers who have been established for decades. A lot of people leave once the personal cost gets bigger than the stars in their eyes. So, because a successful long-term research project needs good human capital more than almost anything else, it helps to have: 1) Good rewards for small successes. This could be easy for life extension research if the intermediate step of "add 1 year" is rewarded well and the reward is public (so people know the reward is there). 2) An allied industry which provides jobs for "failures", from which they can regather strength before jumping back in. Silicon Valley has done well because failed software startup founders can work at a big software company for a while before jumping back in. Fusion suffers from the fact that once you get a job in another industry, jumping back in is difficult. I don't know if medicine is so specialized that this is a problem for aging cures. 3) A popular perception that the goal is achievable. Fusion does better at this than curing aging. This ties back into the "reward small goals" in point 1; publicly achieve small goals and the big goal doesn't look so impossible. Good luck! We all hope you are able to contribute to an aging cure!