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. It breaks that question into eight kinds of damage that would have to be dealt with, lists the specific treatments and measuring tools that would have to arrive under each, and computes a year from them. Beside the year it keeps a dated record of who promised what and when, held against what has actually been shown.
No reading of the week's news against the treatments has run yet. The first one follows the records, and this line will say when it ran and what came of it.
What the top of this page will show
The middle estimate of the year repair overtakes ageing, with its spread: "2063, and anywhere from 2044 to not this century" is the shape of it.
The chance it arrives before 2050, a fixed date chosen because the loudest promises all land before it.
The share of runs in which it does not arrive this century. That is the honest width of the argument.
None of the three is typed in. Every treatment and tool on the tree carries an estimate of the year it reaches the clinic, as a range with the reasoning beside it; the tree is played out many thousands of times, drawing a year for each; and the three numbers are read off the spread of results.
The eight branches
The published science groups ageing into twelve "hallmarks": twelve kinds of damage and failure that build up in a body over a lifetime. Twelve is too many to hold after one visit, so this site groups them into seven kinds of damage that repair would have to address, and adds an eighth branch for the tools that would show whether any repair worked. Each branch is a reason the year reads as it does: a branch with no treatment in the clinic pushes the year out; a branch where a regulator accepts a measure of ageing as proof pulls it in.
Worn-out cells
Cells 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.
5 treatments and tools written so farDamaged DNA
Mutations 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.
4 treatments and tools written so farThe cell's settings
The 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.
5 treatments and tools written so farBroken proteins and waste
Misfolded 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.
5 treatments and tools written so farEnergy and fuel sensing
The 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.
7 treatments and tools written so farReplacing lost cells and parts
The 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.
7 treatments and tools written so farInflammation and the body's messaging
Low-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.
5 treatments and tools written so farMeasuring ageing
The 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.
5 treatments and tools written so farUnder each branch will hang the specific things that would have to arrive: a drug, a procedure, a gene therapy, a measurement a regulator accepts. Each gets a page with a plain test of what would count, written so that two readers agree; who settles it; 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; the estimate of when it reaches the clinic; and every change to that estimate, dated, with its reason. About forty in the first version.
What is recorded
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. Five are shared with the sister site The Upgrade Tree, and the two records point at each other.
43 written so farWho 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.
30 written so farOther 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 farThe publications
A dated list of the papers, trial reports and regulators' records that bear on the tree, from the founding papers to the newest results, each saying what it changed.
38 written so farThis 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.
none has run yetThe story so far
Everything that moved the year, by how much and why, and everything widely reported that moved nothing, with the test it was read against.
starts with the first recordThe records so far include 1 worked example of the layout, written with the record format on 16 October 2026 and marked as such; the real records are being written and replace them.
How the numbers are worked out
Every treatment and tool on the tree carries a range for the year it reaches the clinic: the earliest it plausibly could, the most likely year, and the latest. A branch counts as handled in the year its second treatment reaches the clinic. The tree is played out two hundred thousand times; in each run a year is drawn for every treatment, each branch's handled year is worked out, the latest across the branches is taken, and a few years are added for treatments to spread from the clinic to ordinary people. The middle of all those runs is the year at the top; the share before 2050 and the share after 2100 are the two numbers beside it. The combination rule is the project's judgment, and the alternatives are written up with it. The full method, with every parameter and the reasons for it, is a working document in the public repository, written for the project rather than for a visitor; the plain account will live on this page.
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.
Records as of 16 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. First version planned for 25 October 2026.