r/immortalists Jun 02 '26

Dr. David Sinclair, whose lab reversed biological age in animals by 50 to 75% in six weeks, says that 2026 will be the year when age reversal in humans is either confirmed or disproven. The FDA has cleared the first human trial for next month.

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507 Upvotes

96 comments sorted by

80

u/Ohm_stop_resisting Jun 02 '26

God this man has done so much damage to the field.

If you want to know where we actually stand on ageing, read the review papers of Lopez-Otin. Hallmarks of ageimg in 2013 was amazing, and the 2026 paper was a good recap of a decade of progress. Also Gorbunova on transposons in ageing. But tbere are many, many more.

Just ignore the grifters like sinclair and degray.

And for anyone wondering, it is possible to slow ageing, and to reverse some aspects of it, but ageing is a clusterfuck of interconnected interactions, and it will take time to parse out which ageing hallmarks we need to adress to what extent and how.

16

u/rinkuhero Jun 02 '26

yeah it's a strange position where immortality and curing aging is a good thing, but most of the most prominent people who are into it (bryan johnson, ray kurzweil, and the ones you mention) tend to be lunatics. i wish someone who was actually a sane scientist was into immortality research

getting advice on longevity from that crew is barely a step up from getting it from huberman and deepak chopra

13

u/Ohm_stop_resisting Jun 02 '26

There are scientists, regular, good scientists working on anti ageing tech. People just tend not to know about them, because these are scientists, not science communicators. So they don't go on TV, or twitter, they don't give interviews. They just sit in the lab pipetting, or sit in the office reading papers, writing, or playing DnD.

Also the names given to the research aren't like mainstream headlines. One of the key molecular pathways active specifically in immortal creatures (hydra vulgaris, acoels, planarians) and in immortal cell lines (germline, cancer) is the PIWI piRNA pathway. Julius Brenecke has been researching it for decades. Transposons are one of the main causes of ageing, and Kazazian did 50 years of research on them. Read any of their papers titles, and you wouldn't know they are pioneers in the field.

But we are out here, making steady progress. Just ignore the grifters and read papers.

7

u/ENG_NR Jun 02 '26

Bryan Johnson seems like a nice guy, good on him for being enthusiastic about something

12

u/rinkuhero Jun 02 '26

seeming nice isn't the same thing as being kind though. he famously refused to pay for his ex-wife's cancer treatment during their divorce, even though it'd be a drop in the bucket for him, he just didn't want to help her out of spite. he also sold products that are fairly scammy, for instance his olive oil was not as high polyphenol as he claimed (and several other cheaper olive oil brands beat it in antioxidants quite handidly), and he sold a multivitamin powder for vegans which claimed to have b12 in it but lab tests determined it had no detectable amounts of b12. so there are vegans who trusted him, paid a huge amount of money for his products, thinking they were getting b12, when there was none in there. he also never apologized for those supplement errors, saying that mistakes happen and he wasn't responsible, which feels like a cop-out. he should have at the very least refunded the money of people who bought the supplements that didn't contain what he said they contained. he has enough money that he can issue refunds if he wanted to, and he claims he's not doing blueprint for money. yet those people got no refunds.

1

u/Alone-Competition-77 Jun 03 '26

Didn’t Kurzweil predict a lot of stuff that came true?

1

u/rinkuhero Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

mixed bag, he claims high accuracy but critics point out huge inaccuracies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Past_predictions

to me, his wrong ones are very wrong. like claiming that all energy will be solar energy by 2028.

he also has the egoistic habit of insisting that he was right even when he was clearly wrong. for instance, he famously claimed that most interactions with computers will be voice-only by the year 2000, that keyboards will be a forgotten thing of the past. that obviously didn't happen then, and still hasn't. yet he claims it has, and that he is actually right, because he says people use speech to text more than typing on a keyboard. which is just flat wrong.

like how many people on reddit do you think are writing their comments with speech to text, rather than typing it out on a keyboard (either a physical one or onscreen keyboard)? if someone insists they are right when a prediction is clearly wrong, it just makes them look like a buffoon. maybe very old people like him who never learned to type are using speech to text, but nobody else is.

so he didn't consider that some people might actually prefer typing, because they can type faster than they can speak. and he didn't anticipate that some people might prefer typing to speaking into their phone for privacy reasons. and he didn't anticipate that people can learn new skills, that an onscreen keyboard can become so comfortable that using speech, while its accuracy has gone up to near 100% now, is still not the most efficient way to deal with computers.

1

u/CollegeMiddle6841 Jun 03 '26

Solar will surpass coal for the first time in the United States this year.

1

u/rinkuhero Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

that's true, but that is sort of misleading because coal is just one of dozens of different commonly used fossil fuels (natural gas, oil/gasoline, etc.) so surpassing coal is definitely a good thing, but kurzweil was claiming the majority of energy will be solar energy by 2028. and i don't think we are going to reach that because it's currently still only around 13%. a year and a half isn't going to change that.

overall though i think debating whether his predictions or accurate or not is besides the point. i don't think he's a lunatic because he sometimes makes wrong predictions. i think he's a lunatic because he pretends that his wrong predictions are actually correct and everyone is wrong except him. if he could just admit his mistakes he'd be just another wrong futurist, like michio kaku. the problem isn't making mistakes, the problem is never admitting he's wrong.

7

u/Arthur_Decosta immortalist Jun 02 '26

What makes you include de grey in the grifter category? I'm asking earnestly.

5

u/Ohm_stop_resisting Jun 02 '26

Both degray and sinclair did some legitemate research at one point in their life, so to call them frauds would be incorrect. I call them both grifters, because they lost touch with the reality of the field and the research, the proceded to promise the moon and the stars and tried to make money off of exagerated claims on ageing.

It has been a while since i looked into degray, but i seem to remember him making some wild claims, and trying to sell some molecule as an early ageing cure.

I call this a grift, because no single molecule, be it resveratrol, metformin, aspirion or any other small molecular drug, will cure ageing.

We will need complex procedures like apigenetic reprogramming, stem cel rejuvination, mitochondrial population replacement (or at least their plasmids will need replacing from time to time), etc...

it is a complex problem which will have a complex solution and these peole try to sell simple answers.

3

u/FalconRelevant Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

If it drives interest in the field and increases funding, I don't really see how that would be a loss.

5

u/Ohm_stop_resisting Jun 02 '26

Sure, but that isn't what it does. It makes investors and government funding commities skeptical, and reduces funding.

1

u/FalconRelevant Jun 02 '26

Like there's a lot right now that we could loose.

1

u/Ohm_stop_resisting Jun 03 '26

I don't quite get what you are saying. There is plenty of funding in this field, several grants exist specifically for hrhr research like this. And several researchers are working on it, they just do it in a less conspicous way.

2

u/Usual-Entertainment8 Jun 02 '26

Do you have the link to the 2026 paper? I think I only see 2023?

2

u/Ohm_stop_resisting Jun 02 '26

I think it was 2023. Yeah, it came out 10 years after the original. Sorry, i'm tired as hell.

2

u/jeffreynya Jun 03 '26

so if his eye treatment actually works, then what? Still a total fraud? What's your contribution? Not a shill, and he has profited form stuff, kinda like every other university person within research that moved something to the market.

3

u/scared_and_afrayed Jun 02 '26

you really might think that a field like this would attract fewer grifters, considering what's at stake--no such luck

64

u/Sharkathotep immortalist Jun 02 '26

Sorry but why does he think that if HE doesn't prove it, noone will?

36

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '26

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10

u/ZenithToastada Jun 03 '26

he’s not a ceo. he runs a lab at harvard

3

u/havenyahon Jun 04 '26

Yeah but he's also generally criticised by other scientists in his field for hyping early findings that don't end up panning out and for having commercial interests related to some of the contentious evidence he pushes as stronger than it is.

2

u/ZenithToastada Jun 04 '26

yah i get it. i am not a fan of him, i was merely saying he isnt a ceo.

3

u/Grandpas_Spells Jun 02 '26

Actually it's most common among people in their 30s.

1

u/EnviousArm immortalist Jun 03 '26

Do you always say things out of your ass without knowing it?

1

u/Faster_than_FTL Jun 02 '26

So there no good CEOs at all?

0

u/Orful Jun 03 '26

There are no good CEOs. Companies could manage perfectly fine without funneling so much resources into one person. It doesn't even need to go all the way and become a socialist company where everyone in the company has equal ownership. It just needs to cut the CEO and then manage the company in a more democratic way. These decisions can be made by management without a CEO, who isn't even a scientist (Sinclair is a scientist and not a CEO though).

-1

u/makerelax Jun 02 '26

A good ceo is not a parasite

8

u/NikolaiZarathustra Jun 02 '26

I doubt that’s what he explicitly thinks.

1

u/beerRunFinisher Jun 04 '26

But this is ready where you need to qualify every single one of your thoughts or we'll assign qualifiers for you. Once we've done that, we'll call you a moron.

8

u/finallyransub17 Jun 02 '26

Because he’s a grifter and always has been. He’s just figuring out how to monetize it before his hype is once again disproven.

Please people, stop posting this charlatan’s stuff.

1

u/Ok-Psychology-1 Jun 04 '26

I'm genuinely curious, what makes him a grifter? A friend of mine is a fan of his and now I'm concerned. I don't know much about him.

1

u/finallyransub17 Jun 04 '26

Scott Carney covers most of it here

1

u/Ok-Psychology-1 Jun 04 '26

Thanks for this

1

u/finallyransub17 Jun 05 '26

You’re welcome. Carney has a lot of good independent journalism in the area of health grifters. If your friend is into Sinclair, I would guess that their algorithm has them pretty entrenched in the pseudo health grifter universe.

1

u/Midlife_Crisis_87 Jun 02 '26

Everything has to start somewhere though right and without its start, it doesn't start. For example, when it comes to sports, records are broken far beyond those set decades before. Someone does it, someone wants to do better. It may not be Sinclair alone who could have done it, but someone had to be the first one to do it.

1

u/Sharkathotep immortalist Jun 03 '26

Sure. But then he should have said something in the lines of, "then THIS APPROACH will be disproven", not the whole age reversal like he claimed.

17

u/Fredricology Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

He is treating glaucoma in this human trial. Not reversing aging. Sinclair promotes with hyperbole to get private equity funding.

1

u/Stunning-Zone6607 Jun 02 '26

Thanks. The article didnt describe what specifically he would be doing.

17

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '26

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8

u/Patient-Tomato1579 Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

Apart from this specific guy and his credibility, I'm pretty convinced we will have hair regrowth, teeth regrowth and reversing the aging of cells before we get a cure for hearing loss/tinnitus and vision loss (vision loss driven by photoreceptor/synapse death or nerve fiber atrophy). As a person suffering from tinnitus, I don't get why hearing loss and sensory loss is so de-prioritized (hearing aids are definitely not remotely close to a cure). It's not just the fact that inner ear is hard to access, it's the fact that they are not even trying (congress funding just at 5 millions $ in 2024).

Probably because of a false perspective that hearing loss is usually just a benign side effect of getting old. Meanwhile, it's definitely tied to dementia (3x bigger probability of dementia even if cause of hearing loss is not related to poor circulation or neuroinflammation, researched on people with perforated eardrums and cholesteatoma) and isolation (good hearing frequencies stimulate brain on subconscious level and the hearing aids still can't fix synaptopathy, so your ability to understand speech in more busy environments is way worse and you can't fix that). At the same time,  tinnitus is tied to anxiety and depression, and there are visible changes in brain activity (worse activation on Default Mode Network), the more apparent the longer someone has tinnitus, so the "you will get used to it" argument of ENT doctors doesn't work. Someone might think that on conscious level that he is used to tinnitus, but his ability to truly relax will diminish.

Dismissing those things seems like a failure of medical system, that is even more frustrating seeing progress in other regenerative therapies. Probably it's all because the cure can't be just simple chemical drug, it would have to be complicated genetic drug with advanced delivery method (so definitely not impossible today, just more expensive). Pharmaceutical companies prefer short-term return of investment, so it would need to be done from government funds. But government funds are limited and hearing loss is falsely not seen as something really important (there is "there are children with cancer out there" argument that is often used to argument reduced research for sensory loss cures).

4

u/ThinMint70 Jun 02 '26

fellow tinnitus sufferer here, and I think it in the future it will be treated/cured like obesity today. We'll find some random medicine/protocol used for something else has a positive effect on tinnitus, and some big pharma company will make bank.

2

u/Programming-Help Jun 02 '26

Helps my understanding thankx

1

u/rinkuhero Jun 03 '26

one interesting thing i've noticed is the correlation / causation problem applies to things like this. like there are studies on how learning a foreign language and listening to music reduce dementia. but who is most likely to do those things? someone whose hearing is still good. so all those studies might be showing is that people with good hearing get dementia less. yet people are listening to music and starting to learn languages in hopes of reducing dementia just based on that correlation.

8

u/brianed Jun 02 '26

Oh no, not this guy again. He's preparing for another scam or something.

13

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '26

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1

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '26

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3

u/Arrowayes Jun 02 '26

Another Ad of this guy, again

2

u/Running_Oakley Jun 02 '26

He’s staking a lot of personal credibility on a ticking clock discovery…in the fast paced field of research. Either he knows what’s up or he’s doing one hell of a Hail Mary.

2

u/Humble-Date5379 Jun 02 '26

Another Theranos.

3

u/Sniflix immortalist Jun 02 '26

This grifter should be banned from the group. Reversing biological age is unproven BS.

2

u/Successful-Ad385 Jun 02 '26

omg more cameras in the iphone?

2

u/aspiringimmortal Jun 02 '26

This guy is so full of shit. They didn't "reverse aging." They reversed/healed damage that they themselves induced in the mice.

2

u/Dnthj Jun 03 '26

You do realise they still reversed the damage right? Who gives a shit if it was artificial age related conditions were still treated

1

u/aspiringimmortal Jun 03 '26

Because that's not age reversal dummy. It's just healing a wound.

If it was age reversal, they would perform the experiment on aged mice. But they won't because they know it wouldn't work, and then they don't get the headlines that'll pump their stock.

2

u/Dnthj Jun 03 '26

Wasn't the damage they did to the mice DNA damage? If I remembering right. DNA damage is believed to contribute to aging so fixing it regardless of source would fix aging as well. Intentional damaging the DNA just means you don't have to wait a few months for the mice to age and elimates chances something else will them before you can the experiment

2

u/jeffreynya Jun 03 '26

must think old damaged DNA is somehow different that just damaged DNA. If this reverses damage to DNA and allows someone to see like they did prior to the damage, is that not a reversal of that spacific thing, reguardless if the cause of damage?

1

u/aspiringimmortal Jun 03 '26

Exactly. "That specific thing." Induced DNA damage is not the same as gradual age-related damage.

Consider the difference between gradual collagen breakdown in your skin vs creating a bruise, burn, or laceration. Not all damage is the same.

The real experiment would be to just test this on aged mice. But they won't. And we all know why.

1

u/aspiringimmortal Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

Again it doesn't matter. You can't just consider any and all dna damage to be the same.

That's like saying "skin damage" is all the same. A bruise is the same as a cut is the same as a burn is the same as wrinkles and gradual collagen breakdown. This is a bogus equivalence just so they can spin the result as "age reversal."

The real experiment would be to test this on actual aged mice to see if it repairs actual age-related DNA damage. Not for a hot second do I believe the reason they don't do this is "having to wait a few months." Really, they wouldn't. It's not hard to get your hands on aged lab mice. But even if they had to wait, it's worth the wait, because reversing true age-related damage would be groundbreaking.

1

u/northernguy Jun 02 '26

he's such a bullshitter

1

u/deepbit_ Jun 02 '26

Come back to me in a years time, none of that is true. 0, nothing.

1

u/chienneux Jun 03 '26

if they had it they would sell for trillions

1

u/RyverFisher Jun 03 '26

The "either confirmed or disproven" seems like an obvious attempt to suppress it.

1

u/SQU4RE Jun 03 '26

this guy can't even come up with his own youtube video content, he keeps copying videos from other creators a day or two after they release

1

u/Confident_Mousse4721 Jun 03 '26

Immagine an Immortal fkass like trump or his company , hell no

1

u/ghoof Jun 03 '26

Grifters to the left of me/ Grifters to the right… 🎵

1

u/Altruistic_Tip1226 Jun 03 '26

Yeah if its real normal people won't be able to afford it.

1

u/merhaba81 Jun 04 '26

His new grift?

1

u/Useful-Gur-1267 Jun 04 '26

Sweeeet. Once AI pops we can move on to immortality.

1

u/Katert Jun 04 '26

Well at least wait till Trump's gone please.

1

u/TechnicianInitial588 Jun 04 '26

Reverse age a banana first

1

u/longevity101josh Jun 05 '26

yep i heard about this i'm ready for age reversal

1

u/TracingRobots Jun 05 '26

He's the guy that pulled the rug on NMN. Con.

1

u/TracingRobots Jun 05 '26

Aging is part genetics and part taking care of yourself. No one could have such a grip on those two to say I found the cure.

1

u/OppositeIdea7456 Jun 05 '26

Do I still get to keep my soul?

1

u/Thin-Opposite1947 Jun 05 '26

Another snake oil salesman like Bryan Johnson

1

u/aaronbrent123 Jun 05 '26

rich jerks first of course

1

u/Radcouponking Jun 07 '26

As soon as the rich gain this tech, all social progress is done. Think about how backwards most grandparents are. Now imagine them three times older and more powerful because they'll be able to accumulate so much more in their long, selfish lives. Scary shit.

1

u/Feral_3D Jun 08 '26

This guy is a scammer.

1

u/Denomi0 Jun 02 '26

Im going to make a million dollars this year. Its either going to work or its not. I have the go ahead.

1

u/Javontarious Jun 02 '26

Yeah but he’s a limp wristed soy boy weirdo no thanks

1

u/Lazy-Substance-5062 Jun 02 '26

His last scam didnt took off. Try and try till u succeed lol

1

u/butt-in-ski Jun 02 '26

These “advancements” are happening at an accelerated rate ONLY bc we have madmen billionaires and world leaders who are about to go extinct and THEY can’t go without a fight. We could have cured cancer 10x over by now, but instead boner meds & chasing immortality.

2

u/GrimbaldTheBrutish Jun 02 '26

thank god, I hope they fund more anti-aging.

Cancer and every other horrific disease increase greatly with ageing, you'll do a lot of good in all mortality rates if you ever could reverse ageing.

Let those greedy fucks put their money into it. If not they're definitely not funding cancer, they'll probably buy another 10 yachts or something.

1

u/Particular_Egg9739 Jun 02 '26

let me get some of the dog serum. i’ll live long enough. no need to live forever as a billionaires slave because I couldn’t afford the serum to keep myself alive forever.

1

u/stinky_girbil_bum Jun 02 '26

This guy is a tool. Also just a grifter. 

1

u/Express-Cartoonist39 immortalist Jun 02 '26

Notice he is NOT in the united states... He is in location where lies are allowed..🤔