Neglectedness of life extension

João Pedro de Magalhães has created the “Who’s Who in Gerontology” tool, which lists people and companies working on aging research around the world. For instance, as of 2014-02-04, the site lists 23 companies and 284 researchers.

Some questions to ask are:

• Are the numbers given above a lot for this type of research? (How many people are working on other areas of biomedical research?)

• Are the numbers large or small compared to dissimilar fields in academia or other completely unrelated causes? (This will tell us whether biomedical research in general might be neglected.)

• Even if these numbers are large, it might still be the case that aging research can take on a lot more people. For instance de Magalhães says how volunteers can help out in labs. (FIXME: find that page)