I would rather say SENS is on the edge of the mainstream. de Grey attended and SENS partially sponsored the last major aging conference this year (AGE in San An

I would rather say SENS is on the edge of the mainstream. de Grey attended and SENS partially sponsored the last major aging conference this year (AGE in San Antonio). If SENS were truly a fringe organization, the conference organizers wouldn't have allowed it. SENS did start out a decade ago by making very extreme statements, but they have moderated their tone significantly since then. It's fair to say OP is a SENS enthusiast. But, as a fellow researcher, you know that there are always differences of opinion about what avenues will be more or less fruitful in a field. That's OK, time will tell. Personally, I'm not certain whether SENS' fundamental position -- that we should focus on engineering solutions to damage rather than identifying causes -- is correct, but it seems at least a coherent argument. Suppose OP is right: that we are wasting too much money on one rather than another. It would be a real problem, with real consequences: lives lost, and so on. Worth debating, at least.