The article reports, "Turner said a 'magic pill' that reverses ageing is several years away, partially due to the cost of the compound, which would be about $50

The article reports, "Turner said a 'magic pill' that reverses ageing is several years away, partially due to the cost of the compound, which would be about $50,000 a day for a human." That suggests several things. The clinical trials will be small in the beginning, and thus the small-n studies will not have much statistical power. There will be some kind of patent scramble related to any patentable technology that can reduce the cost of producing the chemical in a dosage form appropriate for human medicine. And (if and only if this preliminary finding in mice translates into a safe and effective human medicine) there will be immense political pressure for a public subsidy to make treatment like this available to more patients. The HN participant who kindly submitted this interesting story found a news source with a nuanced headline, "Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice." That doesn't overpromise, and tells what stage the research is in. The news report mentions that the researchers have a peer-reviewed journal publication in Cell http://www.cell.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867413015213?cc=y http://www.cell.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867413015213?cc=y on their findings, and I suppose many scientists will be looking at that publication and thinking about their study findings. That too is better than the usual submission to HN. Many, many submissions to HN are based at bottom on press releases, and press releases are well known for spinning preliminary research findings beyond all recognition. This has been commented on in the PhD comic "The Science News Cycle,"[1] which only exaggerates the process a very little. More serious commentary in the edited group blog post "Related by coincidence only? University and medical journal press releases versus journal articles"[2] points to the same danger of taking press releases (and news aggregator website articles based solely on press releases) too seriously. Press releases are usually misleading. The most sure and certain finding of any preliminary study will be that more research is needed. All too often, preliminary findings don't lead to further useful discoveries in science, because the preliminary findings are flawed. The obligatory link for any discussion of a report on a research result like the one kindly submitted here is the article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"[3] by Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, on how to interpret scientific research. Check each news story you read for how many of the important issues in interpreting research are NOT discussed in the story. [1] http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174 [2] http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/related-by-coincidence-only-journal-press-releases-versus-journal-articles/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/related-by-coi... [3] http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html