I find it easy to get caught up in all the positive developments in the longevity field; and people are quick to highlight their successes while they are much more reticent on the hiccups / failures / problems in the field.
So I appreciate the doses of reality you get when people reveal when things are not going to plan, because in real life I find things rarely go exactly as you had hoped.
At the most recent Longevity Clinic Roundtable conference they had a presentation by a concierge medicine doctor (runs a series of clinics around the country for the wealthiest) and he had a slightly different perspective than most of the presenters. At all of these conferences (as with any commercial conference) virtually everyone is trying to sell you something in one way or another. So you always have to be skeptical and dig into what they are not telling you. And in this specific case you might say that the doctor presenting is also selling himself and his more traditional concierge medicine clinics that are as a class of organizations are seeing their customers turn more and more to the âcutting edgeâ longevity clinics and groups that are pushing the envelope more (think of the stuff that Bryan Johnson is doing). So in some ways you could look at this presentation below as just a natural reaction from the more traditional doctors, to a threat to their business.
But - I think there is also something to be learned here, and its always valuable to get opinions and data from multiple perspectives, so I encourage you to review the slides and listen to the presentation (see the audio file Iâve attached).
Many of us here are pushing the envelope when it comes to longevity medicine. And its easy to be optimistic and visualize the positive outcomes of people successfully using these approaches to live longer, healthier lives. But when you push the bleeding edge of medical technology, its inevitable that some people are going to get negative results. So, I think its important to keep this in mind, and take as many actions as you can to avoid these types of outcomes.
You are never going to hear about the mistakes, the screw ups, or the bad outcomes, from the Longevity clinics or related suppliers themselves. So, its a breath of fresh air (in my mind) to hear from the people who are left holding the bag, and doing the âclean upâ after something goes awry. In this case, its the regular doctors who have to help get the person back to health after something goes wrong in the longevity clinic. In this sense, as Dr. Shlain points out below, the incentives in this new era of longevity medicine are a little off, and as a result âMoral Hazardâ is encountered. The stem cell clinic that sells you a service (in this case, for $100,000) incurs none of the costs associated with nursing a person back to health when things go wrong. Its the traditional medical system that bears the burden, and of course, the person who is suffering the negative results.
It also occurs to me that there is âmoral hazardâ in the health insurance industry in the USA, where companies like UnitedHealthcare get âpaidâ by refusing medical treatment to people, and the failure of treatment falls on the rest of society, to the companies whoâs employees donât get proper treatment, to the emergency rooms of hospitals that are overburdened by situations that could have easily been avoided if treated earlier, to the individuals and families that are directly impacted. Life Expectancy in the USA (Bad and Getting Worse) - #287 by RapAdmin
Anyway - for anyone who is enthusiastic about the longevity fieldâs progress, its a good idea to listen and learn about when things go wrong, and try to understand why, and how to avoid these types of situations for yourself in the future.
Here is the Audio File that covers most of the presentation. Iâd recommend listing to it as you scroll through the slides below: (sorry for the poor quality of the audio, itâs hard to take photos and record on your phone at the same time).
