A public tracker of the race between repair and ageing
2058
The middle estimate of the year medicine starts adding more than a year of healthy life for every year that passes.
When do we start outrunning ageing?
Every year you live, medicine gets a little better. Right now it does not get better fast enough: for a person in middle age, the years they can expect to have left fall by about a year every year, less the small gains new treatments add. This site asks when, if ever, that stops being true: when repair overtakes ageing, so that someone who keeps up with the best available care finds their remaining years holding steady or rising instead of falling.
Last checked 17 October 2026: 44 treatments, 27 claims and 9 self-experiments read; none moved; 2 left for the author. See the week's reading.
Sheet I · The spread of escape years
- share of runs ending in each five years
- before 2050, the date the loudest promises name
Two hundred thousand runs of the tree, each drawing a year for every treatment and tool; the year a run ends is when the last required branch is handled, plus the years it takes a treatment to reach ordinary people. Never typed in.
A treatment, here, is one specific thing that would have to arrive for the year to move: a drug, a procedure, a gene therapy, or a measurement a regulator accepts as proof that something slowed ageing. Each one is written down with a plain test of what would count, written so that two readers would agree; who or what settles that test; where it stands today on a five-rung ladder from idea only to in wide use, with the date and the public record for every rung reached; and the project's estimate of the year it reaches the clinic, as a range with the reasoning beside it. The eight branches are the eight things that would have to be dealt with: seven kinds of damage that build up in a body over a lifetime, and the tools that would show whether any repair worked. Beside the year the site keeps a dated record of who promised what and when, held against what has actually been shown.
None of the numbers on the first screen is typed in. The tree of 44 treatments and tools is played out 200,000 times, drawing a year for each from its range; the middle of all those runs is the year at the top, and the numbers beside it and every mark on the chart are read off the same spread, anywhere from 2050 to 2069. Every range the year draws from has been through an outside review, in which a model from another lab argued each one up or down and the author ruled on every disagreement. The year will still move as the evidence does, and every move is dated with its reason. How the numbers are worked out.
The eight branches
what has to be dealt with, and what is recorded under each- 1 of 85 treatments and toolsWorn-out cellsCells that have stopped dividing but will not die, and sit in the tissue giving off signals that inflame their neighbours. They build up with age; clearing them makes old mice healthier and longer-lived.Furthest stage: first human . Handled, in the middle run, by 2043
- 2 of 84 treatments and toolsDamaged DNAMutations that accumulate in a cell's DNA over a lifetime, and the shortening of the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes each time a cell divides.Furthest stage: first human . Handled, in the middle run, by 2044
- 3 of 85 treatments and toolsThe cell's settingsThe chemical marks that tell a cell which of its genes to read, which drift with age so that cells slowly forget what they are. Resetting them part of the way has reversed signs of age in animals.Furthest stage: first human . Handled, in the middle run, by 2044
- 4 of 85 treatments and toolsBroken proteins and wasteMisfolded proteins, the failure of the cell's recycling of its own worn parts, and the waste and cross-links between proteins that build up inside and between cells.Furthest stage: in clinical use . Handled, in the middle run, by 2023
- 5 of 88 treatments and toolsEnergy and fuel sensingThe cell's power plants, which fail with age, and the pathways that sense how much food is coming in, which run wrong with age and are the target of the drugs most often said to slow ageing.Furthest stage: in clinical use . Handled, in the middle run, by 2028
- 6 of 87 treatments and toolsReplacing lost cells and partsThe reserve of cells that replace lost tissue runs out with age, tissue goes unreplaced and organs fail. The route around that is to supply the parts: stem cells, organs from gene-edited animals, organs grown outside the body.Furthest stage: in clinical use . Handled, in the middle run, by 2032
- 7 of 85 treatments and toolsInflammation and the body's messagingLow-grade inflammation that never switches off, the gut's community of microbes going out of balance, and the signals cells send each other through the blood going wrong with age.Furthest stage: in clinical use . Handled, in the middle run, by 2026
- 8 of 85 treatments and toolsMeasuring ageingThe tools that say whether any of the above worked without waiting decades: biological age clocks read from blood or saliva, blood and imaging markers, and whether a regulator will accept any of them as proof that a treatment slowed ageing.Furthest stage: first human . Handled, in the middle run, by 2040
A branch counts as handled in the year its second treatment reaches the clinic, so a branch with nothing in the clinic pushes the year out and one where a regulator accepts a measure of ageing as proof pulls it in. The tree has the branches one at a time.
What is recorded
six kinds of record, each with its own page-
The treatments and tools
One page each, under its branch, with the test, who settles it, the stage reached and the estimate of when it reaches the clinic. 5 are shared with the sister site The Upgrade Tree, and the two records point at each other.
44 written so far, 6 already in the clinic -
Who promised what
A dated log of what named people and companies have said about when, each with the primary source and what it commits to, and a verdict filled in as the dates pass. It sits beside the year and moves no number.
31 claims by 21 people and organisations -
Other people's public self-experiments
Who, what they do, what they measure, what they claim, and what the public record actually shows. A claim about one person is a story, not a record, and it moves nothing on the tree.
9 written so far -
The story so far
Every paper, trial report and regulator's record that bears on the tree, dated, each saying what it settled or moved, and the ones that moved nothing beside them with equal billing.
55 publications logged -
This week's reading
Every treatment and tool read against the week's news, with a verdict for each, including the weeks when nothing moved. The weeks when nothing moved are the point.
1 reading so far -
How the numbers are worked out
The model in plain words, every setting with its reason and its strongest alternative, one run written out by hand, and the working documents published as written.
computed 17 October 2026
Who is asking
John Fredrickson, who also keeps The Belt Equation, The Quiet Galaxy and The Upgrade Tree, three sister sites built the same way: one question at the top, a small fixed set of reasons under it, and under each reason the specific things that would have to happen, each with a test, each watched and dated. This one is the fourth. It records what has been shown and what has been promised; it recommends nothing, and nothing on it is medical advice. The author's own health record is not part of it. The place to push back is Disagree with something.
Records as of 17 October 2026. Everything on this site is built from a public repository, on GitHub, where every number carries its source and every change its date. The year was computed on 17 October 2026 and the chance before 2050 is 4.1 per cent.