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Comment by mdavis6890 | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that anything related to the human body is super-heavily regulated, which creates a ton of friction and risk to doing anything innovative.

I think the folks that would get very excited about working on the problem of aging would not be excited about the amount of regulatory bureaucracy (trying to find a non-judgmental word to use there) that necessarily goes along with it.

In fact I think that the reason that so much innovation and wealth creation is concentrated in things which such dubious social benefit is exactly that it isn't regulated, because it doesn't matter. If it matters and is important, it becomes regulated, which slows and discourages innovation and the people who want to innovate.

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There's tons of basic research that could be done before we ever get to the regulatory question of human trials. If we could get pigs to live for 50 years (currently ~20) it would be a huge step forward in our understanding of aging.

On the other hand, pig life extension is not really a product you can sell. Even human life extension, which should theoretically be worth trillions if it works, seems like too much of a pipe dream. The benefits of basic research only become apparent years or decades down the road, and a lot of it is going to be dead ends.

Whereas it's pretty firmly established that if you can make a $700 smartphone that's slightly better than last year's, you can sell millions of them.

(Although apparently you can find a handful of people who want to inject sheep cells in their butt despite having no proven benefit: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15320660-500-germany-... )

I don't think that the main problem is the regulation. The regulations are a side effect of how difficult and harmful these experiments could to humans. In the software business when a project fails we can just used a starting point for the next iteration. In life sciences they don't have that luxury. There is no way to test something quickly (in seconds and minutes).

May be one day we'll have a complete model of the human body and medicine and drugs can be tested through a software.

"...anything related to the human body is super-heavily regulated"

In the Western world this is true. Countries with less oversight stand to benefit from regulation arbitrage.

Of course, China already has refuted your thesis. Due to lack of oversight and regulation (and enforcement), their health care system is mistrusted by everyone. That's why the country's covid inoculation rate has been so low. Because trust is very hard to regain once lost, ensurance of safety and efficacy in healthcare through regulation has clear advantages.

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