This is the third post of a series in which I'm trying to build a framework to evaluate aging research. Previous posts:

1. A general framework for evaluating aging research. Part 1: reasoning with Longevity Escape Velocity

2. Aging research and population ethics

Summary

Age-related disease and decline account for, more or less, 30% of total DALYs in the 2017 Global Disease Report made by the World Health Organisation, and the figure is rising sharply each year. Aside from DALYs lost, there's evidence that age-related disease and disability negatively impact life satisfaction. Better healthcare for age-related diseases would result in social and economic benefits, such as an increased global workforce, a decrease of social burden due to age-related diseases, a decrease in individual healthcare expenditure, and less strain on the social security systems, pension systems, and healthcare systems of the world's governments. Currently, all these variables are worsening due to an aging global population. Examples of other, more subtle, sources of impact could be an increased concern for the long-term future along with more preservation of knowledge, which could result in new breakthroughs and improved day-to-day human activities.

Aging research would also impact pets in similar ways to humans, as similar considerations about LEV and DALYs averted apply.

DALYs averted

The last Global Burden of Disease report from the World Health Organisation was made in 2017. It released a handy data visualisation tool, from which we can extract the fraction of DALYs attributable to age-related diseases and decline and their annual percent change from 1990 to 2017. If you sum the percentages, also trying to account for the fraction of age-related ailments not necessarily caused by aging (although this could be unnecessary, since even if some of these diseases appear also in the young, they share the same underlying characteristics), the percentage of total DALYs you get is more or less 30%. Some age-related diseases and ailments accounting for a large fraction of DALYs are: Ischemic heart disease: 6.83%, Stroke: 5.29%, Diabetes Mellitus: 2.71%, Back pain: 2.59%, Lung cancer: 1.64%, Hearing Loss: 1.36%, Alzheimer's: 1.22%, Blindness: 0.71%

The weighted average of annual percent change is positive and sharp, as expected from the aging of the world population and a better ...

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