Thanks to medical advances, we’ve gradually found ways to avoid and treat such causes of death; the end result is perhaps humanity’s greatest ever achievement—we’ve literally doubled what it means to be human, increasing lifespans from 40 to 80 years.We all know that factors such as smoking, lack of exercise, and poor diet can increase the risk of chronic diseases, but these are relatively minor compared to aging.A 2018 paper showed that in experiments in which mice were given a senolytic cocktail of dasatinib (a cancer drug) and quercetin (a molecule found in colorful fruit and veg), not only did they live longer, but they were at lower risk of diseases including cancer, were less frail (they could run further and faster on the tiny mouse-sized treadmills used in the experiments), and even had thicker, glossier fur than their littermates not given the drugs.The biggest is Unity Biotechnology, founded by the Mayo Clinic scientists behind that mouse experiment and with investors including Jeff Bezos, which is trialing a range of senolytic drugs against diseases like macular degeneration (a cause of blindness) and lung fibrosis.Rather than going to the doctor when we’re sick and picking off age-related problems like cancer and dementia in their late stages when they’re very hard to fix, we’ll intervene preventively to stop people getting ill in the first place—and, if those treadmill-shredding mice are anything to go by, we’ll reduce frailty and other problems that don’t always elicit a medical diagnosis at the same time."