But the true extent to which the survival circuit is conserved between yeast and humans wasn't fully known until 2017, when Eva Bober's team at the M… - David A. Sinclair

For Robin Marantz Henig, a columnist at the New York Times, the "bitter truth" about mortality came late in life, after she became a grandparent. "Beneath all the wonderful moments you may be lucky enough to share in and enjoy," she wrote, "your grandchild's life will be a long string of birthdays you will not live to see."3

A study of more than 41,000 metformin users between the ages of 68 and 81 concluded that metformin reduced the likelihood of dementia, cardiovascular disease, cancer, frailty, and depression, and not by a small amount. In one group of already frail subjects, metformin use over the course of nine years reduced dementia by 4 percent, depression by 16 percent, cardiovascular disease by 19 percent, frailty by 24 percent, and cancer by 4 percent.22 In other studies, the protective power of metformin against cancer has been far greater than that.

The tragedy of the commons is that humans are not very good at taking personal action to solve collective problems. The trick to revolutionary change is finding ways to make self-interest align with the common good. For people to accept widespread biometric tracking in a way that could help us get ahead of fast-moving deadly viruses, they'll need to be offered something they have a hard time seeing themselves without.