Probably 30+ years ago I went to a Star Trek convention and went to go see George Takei speak, at the time I was pretty young and was all geared up to hear stories of his time filming the show and/or movies. Instead he spoke about his time in the interment camps. As a ten-ish year old kid, I was pretty confused, but yeah it would be a lie if I said that didn’t stick with me.

Indeed there are, but just under half of all of medical studies performed world wide are performed in the States, roughly half of the world’s pharmaceutical companies based in the States, and the US has consistently lead the world in medical innovations, with almost 50 percent more innovations than from the EU and Switzerland combined.

My point is not to sound US centric, but to say there is a lot of capital and willpower in the US pharmaceutical industry, and without that willpower it will be significantly harder to get rapamycin accepted as a viable longevity drug.

See that’s the interesting thing about rapamycin, it’s an old drug that has been used for immuno-suppression for years now, only just now scientists are discovering this interesting side effect. The patient on rapamycin has expired so you can get a generic prescription for cheap.

But ironically because the patent expired there’s no money in it for the drug companies to get it approved for longevity purposes, so who knows if it will ever become approved for this purpose.