Still, with all the “longevity enthusiasts, there is this misperception that we’re close somehow to doing this,” says Matt Kaeberlein, director of the Healthy Aging and Longevity Research Institute at University of Washington, Seattle.

Huge technical, regulatory, economic and social hurdles stand in the way. For instance, the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t recognize aging as a disease to be treated, meaning there isn’t a clear path to approval for a drug that targets the biology of aging. Researchers instead have to design trials that can quantify whether a drug improves health or extends survival in a specific age-related disease. A pill that a large and generally healthy population would take, perhaps for decades, would have to clear a high safety bar.