The Idea
Outrunning Ageing asks one question: when do we start outrunning ageing? Every year you live, medicine gets a little better, but for a person in middle age it does not yet get better fast enough, so the years you can expect to have left still fall by about a year every year. The site asks when, if ever, that stops being true, so that someone who keeps up with the best available care finds their remaining years holding steady or rising.
The question usually gets filed under science fiction or under marketing. I wanted it broken into pieces anyone can argue about, with a year at the top that is worked out from those pieces and moves in public when a new result moves it. How and why I built it is in the essay that introduced the project.
This post opens the site’s news section. When a new result or one of my decisions moves a treatment to a new stage, changes the year or settles one of the public promises in the claims log, I will write it up here and link the page it changes. A quiet week gets no post.
Where the Numbers Stand
The pieces are treatments, and a few tools for measuring ageing: 45 of them on 18 October 2026, after one joined that day. Each moves through the same five stages: an idea only, shown in animals, tried in people, in use with patients, and in wide use. Each has a plain test for when it counts as in use with patients and, if it is not there yet, a range of years for when it might get there. To find the year at the top, the turning point the site’s question asks about, the site picks a year from every range, works out the turning point that those picks would give, and does this two hundred thousand times, so that the answer shows how uncertain it is rather than resting on a single guess.
On 18 October 2026 the middle of those two hundred thousand results was 2058 (the numbers as they stand). Nine results in ten fell between 2050 and 2069. In 4.3 per cent of the results the turning point came before 2050, which the site calls the chance before 2050, and in every result it came by 2100.
The treatments sit in eight groups, seven for the kinds of damage that ageing does and one for measuring ageing. A group counts as dealt with in the year its second treatment reaches patients. The turning point cannot come until every group is dealt with, and then it waits a few more years while the treatments spread from the clinic to ordinary people. The middle estimate for each group:
- broken proteins and waste: already dealt with, in 2023, since two of its treatments are in use;
- inflammation and the body’s messaging: 2026;
- energy and fuel sensing: 2028;
- replacing lost cells and parts: 2032;
- measuring ageing: 2040;
- worn-out cells: 2043;
- damaged DNA: 2044;
- the cell’s settings: 2044.
Six of the 45 are already in use with patients. The time it takes a treatment to spread from the clinic to ordinary people is my own first guess, anywhere from 3 to 15 years and most likely 8 (how the year is worked out).
The year has stood at 2058 every time it has been worked out, while the chance before 2050 has risen from 2.7 to 4.3 per cent (what changed, day by day).
How to Follow It
Every Sunday morning, Pacific time, the site’s automated weekly search checks the week’s news against every treatment’s test, every promise in the claims log and every public self-experiment (people openly testing a treatment on themselves), and gives each a verdict. That weekly search may move a treatment up one stage, to shown in animals or tried in people and no further, and only on the kind of evidence that treatment’s test names. Putting a treatment in use with patients, changing a range of years or settling a promise is left to me.
Each week’s search is on the Reading page, and the Story gives one line for each day something on the site changed. The Branches page leads to every group and treatment with its test, its stage and its range of years, and the Claims page sets what people have promised beside what has been shown. Every new post also goes out on the news feed.
The Most Interesting News So Far
The biggest move so far came on 17 October 2026, when I moved plasma exchange, which replaces the liquid part of a person’s blood, to in use with patients. The Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona had published on 27 April 2026 that 71 people with Alzheimer’s disease had completed its fifteen-month programme as ordinary care, and I ruled that a named clinic publishing its own practice meets the test. The case against is on the treatment’s page too: the results were a conference talk, not a paper checked by other scientists, and the professional society for treatments that filter the blood still says its role in Alzheimer’s disease is not established. Colchicine, a drug that acts only on inflammation, was already approved to prevent heart attacks, so with plasma exchange the inflammation group moved from 2042 to 2026. The post on plasma exchange tells the whole story.
The year did not move. It waits for the slowest groups, and inflammation was not one of them, while other decisions from the same review pushed some groups later. One was about a drug meant to lengthen the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes: its follow-up study found no lengthening that could be told apart from chance, and its one mid-stage trial was stopped in 2025 because it could not succeed, so its range of years moved later, from between 2030 and 2070 to between 2038 and 2085. Taken together, that day’s decisions raised the chance before 2050 from 3.4 to 4.1 per cent. The review also offered four published figures for how long a treatment takes to spread from the clinic to ordinary people, and none of them held up when checked, so that figure stays my first guess.
Earlier on 17 October a drug to make dogs live longer joined the site at the earliest stage, an idea only, since the only data behind it so far are the company’s own. It sits beside the human treatments because it is the first place a regulator is being asked to put “extends lifespan” on a label. A conditional approval would count as in use, most likely in 2028, and adding it moved the energy and fuel sensing group from 2039 to 2028.
On 18 October 2026, after a close reading of one laboratory’s papers, a new measuring tool joined the site: a count of the DNA in a cell’s power plants, the mitochondria, taken from a blood sample. A 2014 report on 16,401 people found that those with the lowest counts were more likely to die, allowing for age and sex. It joined at the stage of tried in people, and the chance before 2050 rose from 4.1 to 4.3 per cent.
What to Watch For
The cell’s settings group is one of the two slowest, so it holds the year back more than most. Tune Therapeutics reported at a conference in May 2026 that one dose of a treatment that rewrites the chemical marks on a single gene kept the signs of a liver virus, hepatitis B, down in the blood for up to seventeen months. Once that appears in a paper checked by other scientists, or as results posted to the public register of clinical trials, the treatment should move up to tried in people. The register expects the trial’s main results in June 2028.
The drug company Vertex reports its quarterly results on 2 November 2026, and the site is watching for any news that it has applied for approval of zimislecel, insulin-making cells the company grows from stem cells to treat type 1 diabetes (the treatment’s page).
A small early trial of eye drops meant to dissolve the clouded protein of a cataract is due to finish in February 2027, by the register’s estimate; no trial of such drops in people has been published yet. The company behind the dog drug, Loyal, now expects to finish its application in 2027 (the dog drug’s page).
The claims log has dates coming due as well, from 2029 on, among them the inventor Ray Kurzweil’s claim of February 2026 that by 2032 “you’ll gain back one year for each year lived.” A promise in the claims log never moves the year.
Every fact above links to its source or to the page on this site it comes from. The numbers are as they stood on 18 October 2026, and they were the same when the site worked them out again on 19 October (the numbers as they stand).
19 October 2026: this post was rewritten in plainer words; no fact or figure in it changed (what changed, day by day).
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