Ethicists seem a little stuck on the idea that treatments to slow and potentially reverse aspects of aging are only available to the wealthy, or will only be available to the wealthy. Today's open access complaint about making the world a better place at least manages to also touch on what I think is the more pertinent issue, which is knowledge. One can't try interventions that seem plausibly likely to produce benefits in the matter of degenerative aging without knowing that the option is there. One can't make an assessment of the odds of benefit versus harm without knowing a fair amount about biology, mechanisms of action, and the state of the field. One can't accumulate that knowledge without understanding which of the many sources of information are lying through their teeth in order to make money. One can't substitute wealth for knowledge and pay middlemen to point in the right direction without knowing which of those middlemen are corrupt and selling a bill of goods. It's a knowledge problem all the way down.
The most plausible, well-studied initial approaches to treat aging are also readily available at generic drug prices. Rapamycin. Senolytic compounds like the dasatinib and quercetin combination. Or they are free if we're also counting exercise and calorie restriction. The next step up, exosome therapies and stem cell therapies, can be obtained for a few thousand dollars per treatment given a lot of legwork and cost comparison on the part of the patient. The futuristic approaches like partial epigenetic reprogramming? At some point there will be versions that cost little. Just wait.
