Very little research currently goes into attacking aging directly - as opposed to handling things that are in no small part downstream from aging, such as heart disease. A big reason for poor "longevity gains" is lack of trying.
Sleeping well, eating well and exercising does work. Science about this is well-established. So why arent we?
It would not raise the life expectancy to 100 years but it would considerably reduce the health burden on the economy.
We want solutions that can be scaled and rolled out broadly, and "basic healthy lifestyle" ain't it.
I mean, sure, it doesn't scale as well as a magic pill as a business. But is certainly is O(n) with the number of people involved.
Why? Because there's a massive variation in people. Everyone who finds it "very easy" to as much as "sleep well, eat well and exercise" already does just that, and the implementation difficulty ramp up gets brutal quickly. It's simple to suggest and hard to execute.
Pharmaceutics are so valuable because they offer good sublinear scaling on many of the inputs. They're extremely hard to develop, but they're often well worth it, because the implementation scales in a way those "simple" solutions don't.
A healthy lifestyle must be earned. It is a constant struggle against the fastfood industry.
Soon you'll see Coca-cola or Nestlé [0] selling both very unhealthy quasi-addictive food and drinks to kids and magic pills that cure obesity. Sounds scalable enough ?
[0] https://www.nestle.com/brands/healthcare-nutrition/medical-n...
If you think that being healthy should be a reward for a lifestyle of virtue, that's your problem, not mine. I'd rather have an actual solution than a blanket "those people don't struggle hard enough", pointed at the majority of US population that's overweight.
How about some regulation in the F&B industry? Reducing screen time at school? Those can be done now and don't really cost much.
And then make our cities pedestrian and bicycle friendly. More difficult but definitely a win.
Or would you rather pour billions hoping for a magic pill that solves it all? This is not realistic.