>a longevity drug would be screwing around with so many systems in our body that the usual 5 year process (for standard drugs) or even the 10 year process (like

>a longevity drug would be screwing around with so many systems in our body that the usual 5 year process (for standard drugs) or even the 10 year process (like for Hep C meds and such) would likely look like a blur to the people developing longevity drugs. My personal bet, the drug approval process alone would take up all of those 20 years. I think we'll see a host of longevity drugs working on different pieces of the puzzle - a longevity Unix toolkit rather than one monolithic drug. Each of them will have a tractable clinical endpoint to measure, and in the aggregate they will extend lifespan. Of course, we won't really know that until we see a lot of 100+ year old people, unless we get AIs first with models of the human body so good that we can be really confident that they're right. I'm not holding my breath. >The only fast way to market for a drug like this might seriously be to sell to China or Africa and prove it in the field. The only problem here is that you won't ever get the big bucks from Westerners. I don't know how patent law would work here - I think your patent would expire in the West while you were field testing your drug in China, so you would fail to enhance shareholder value.