Latest / Gladden Longevity Podcast / Longevity, Legislation & the Future of Aging: Inside A4LI's Mission - Episode 272

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Longevity, Legislation & the Future of Aging: Inside A4LI's Mission - Episode 272 · Gladden Longevity Podcast

• 1:40
  Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
• 1:43
  I'm your host, Dr.
• 1:44
  Jeffrey Gladden.
• 1:45
  And today I'm joined by somebody, Dylan Lemelson, who is not involved in medicine, but at the same time is very impactful in medicine.
• 1:57
  And I had the opportunity to meet Dylan in the context of some interesting legislation that got passed in Montana.
• 2:04
  And I'll leave that as a little teaser.
• 2:06
  So Dylan, that, welcome to the show.
• 2:08
  Thanks for having me, Gladden.
• 2:10
  I'm excited to chat with you.
• 2:12
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:13
  So Dylan, explain to the audience kind of what it is you do.
• 2:18
  And then we'll ask you a little bit of how you got to be doing that.
• 2:21
  But just so that people understand what is it that you're actually involved in?
• 2:25
  So I founded and I am the president of the Alliance for Longevity Initiatives.
• 2:31
  We are a 501c4 political advocacy nonprofit organization focused on representing the interests of the longevity biotech industry and overall longevity movement on Capitol
• 2:44
  Hill.
• 2:45
  Okay.
• 2:45
  So if you're listening to this, you probably know that there's a pretty entrenched concept around what medicine is and what it isn't that runs through the governmental agencies and
• 2:57
  also through Congress and the presidential branch of the, of the U S has been involved in it as well.
• 3:06
  Point being that it's not particularly friendly to
• 3:11
  what we would call longevity medicine.
• 3:13
  In fact, longevity medicine is not even really recognized as a term by people in what I would call traditional medicine or as I refer to it sometimes as sick care.
• 3:24
  and so how did you come to be enamored with trying to be a champion for longevity medicine, on Capitol Hill?
• 3:32
  What brought you to that?
• 3:33
  Did you wake up at six years old and said, is what I'm going to do with my life or what happened?
• 3:37
  Definitely not.
• 3:39
  But it did.
• 3:40
  My interest in this field did start at a young age, I'll give the quick backstory.
• 3:45
  So I have a father who has been involved with and interested in futuristic technologies from the investment standpoint for about 20 years.
• 3:55
  Okay.
• 3:56
  And one day when he was driving me to school, he showed me a video of Aubrey DeGray, and I was 12 years old at this time.
• 4:06
  Um, and when you're 12 years old and you're driving in the car with your dad and you see a man like Aubrey DeGray with his beard, you're, you know, you're like, well, you know, why
• 4:15
  the heck is Gandalf given me health advice here?
• 4:18
  Right.
• 4:18
  Who is this guy?
• 4:19
  Yeah.
• 4:19
  Right.
• 4:20
  Um, but from that point, I became completely fascinated by the concept of longevity.
• 4:25
  Uh, and then growing up, you know, 13, 14, 15, you kind of stop thinking about aging and living healthier and longer.
• 4:32
  You're more focused on finding a date to the prom and.
• 4:35
  you know, sorting out where you're to go to college and things like that.
• 4:38
  Yeah.
• 4:39
  At that time, also, I got very involved with politics.
• 4:42
  I lived or I went to school, went to college in southeast Pennsylvania, which is a political hotspot.
• 4:49
  And I went to Haverford College, Philadelphia.
• 4:55
  Yep.
• 4:56
  I went to Temple Med and I, I lived in, not far from Haverford.
• 5:02
  Well, it's, it was about three fourths the size of my high school.
• 5:06
  So I'm surprised, you know, not many people do, but it's a great school and I'm happy I went there to expose me to a lot.
• 5:13
  But I got involved with politics in 2017 2018 2019 2020.
• 5:19
  So is this politics as in national politics or like school politics or state politics or whatever?
• 5:25
  State and national.
• 5:27
  So full disclosure, now I am very moderate and ambivalent to political parties.
• 5:37
  In my position now, I have to work with both sides and longevity as a topic should not be politicized or made partisan in any way.
• 5:47
  I've often thought that one thing that everybody, no matter what your political view would be, is that optimizing human life, decreasing human suffering, should be something that
• 6:00
  everybody could agree to.
• 6:02
  Absolutely.
• 6:02
  Yeah.
• 6:03
  It's, it's something everybody agrees with, whether they realize it or not.
• 6:08
  Yeah.
• 6:08
  Right.
• 6:10
  So I give that disclosure to say that, you know, I am, you know, more in the middle than, than ever.
• 6:16
  And it's because of this longevity effort that, you know, brought me to the middle, but I worked for the democratic national committee in 2018 and 2019.
• 6:25
  And then I worked for the Biden campaign out in rural Pennsylvania, what they call pencil Tucky.
• 6:32
  in 2020.
• 6:32
  Right.
• 6:33
  was I was out there in the weeds.
• 6:37
  And during my time with the Biden campaign, COVID hit it was right.
• 6:42
  You know, my time coincided right with the beginning of COVID.
• 6:46
  And really what drove me back to this field was two things.
• 6:50
  One, my grandfather who's turning 98 this year.
• 6:53
  So you might agree that I have some pretty good longevity genes somewhere in my my
• 6:59
  What I would agree is that he has some pretty good longevity genes.
• 7:03
  He definitely does.
• 7:05
  I hope I got some of it.
• 7:06
  definitely hope I got some.
• 7:09
  But he moved in with us at the beginning of COVID and fortunately and miraculously, he's fine and still living a very, very independent life for a 98-year-old.
• 7:21
  I'll make a quick comment about that.
• 7:23
  know that people that live a long time in life, they typically have genetics that optimize their immune system, their cardiovascular health, and their decreased risk of cognitive
• 7:34
  decline.
• 7:34
  That triad seems to be pretty uniform when you go across people that have made it to a hundred or 110, that kind of thing.
• 7:42
  So I suspect he's got some good immune function genes.
• 7:45
  Absolutely.
• 7:46
  He did get COVID eventually and beat it.
• 7:48
  Yeah.
• 7:49
  At 96 maybe.
• 7:51
  So, you know, impressive.
• 7:52
  Yeah.
• 7:53
  And he's still sharp as a tack.
• 7:54
  And, you know, I love him very much and love talking with him.
• 7:58
  And he's a great conversationalist still at this age.
• 8:01
  So I'm very fortunate, very fortunate to have my grandfather.
• 8:05
  But he moved in and unfortunately, you know, many of his friends in his circles did not have the same fate when it came to COVID.
• 8:12
  That's right.
• 8:13
  And so sort of watching him
• 8:15
  watch his friends get sick and pass away affected me in a very major way.
• 8:20
  I started thinking about the pandemic that would hit when I'm 90 and how I wanted to be able to deal with that with my health.
• 8:30
  And then also it was a kind of coming of age moment for me with my college career ending and me kind of joining the real world.
• 8:38
  And it actually wasn't until my college baseball coach and I had our end of career wrap up meeting and he told me, good luck with the rest of your life.
• 8:48
  He said those words and it's burned into my head forever.
• 8:52
  And, you know, I started thinking the rest of my life.
• 8:55
  Oh my, you what's next?
• 8:56
  I'm gonna ask you this, did he say good luck with the rest of your life as in, you you screwed up so badly here, I hope the rest of it's better, or you did so great here, we
• 9:04
  hope the rest of your life is
• 9:06
  you know, I, probably a little bit of both.
• 9:11
  I think he was just saying, you know, I doubt he knows, how much those words impacted me, but, know, it caused me to think about the rest of my life and what the rest of my life
• 9:20
  held.
• 9:21
  And, you know, I started, I sort of saw my fate, if I was lucky to be similar to my grandfather's who is, you know, terrified of a novel disease that could potentially kill
• 9:32
  him at any moment.
• 9:33
  And, you know,
• 9:34
  partially immobile and aged, right?
• 9:37
  And the combination of those two things made me remember about that man with the long beard that I heard about when I was 12.
• 9:48
  And I threw myself into learning as much as I possibly could about this field from sort of a fanboy and a lay person's perspective.
• 9:55
  I'm not a doctor, I have no biology background, but.
• 9:59
  The beautiful part about this effort is you don't need, know, if you're going to create a drug or therapeutic or intervention or treat patients, you probably want a medical or
• 10:08
  biological, biology background, but you can be a player in the field and make things happen even without that.
• 10:14
  And so I sort of realized during my time with the Biden campaign that this field was growing, this longevity field and movement was growing, but no one was on the Hill
• 10:25
  speaking to the powers that be in Congress and in the
• 10:29
  presidents in the White House about ways that they can accelerate the ways they can usher in the age of longevity.
• 10:38
  And so I took it upon myself to start a for li to be sort of a conduit between this growing longevity field and Congress and the White House.
• 10:49
  That's a big vision.
• 10:52
  I mean, at that point in time, you had graduated from college.
• 10:56
  I'm going say you're in your early 20s when all this is going down.
• 11:00
  It's a big vision to say, okay, I'm going to go to Capitol Hill and see if I can change the world around how politics in general, the country in general, maybe because of that,
• 11:09
  the world in general views this whole concept of longevity.
• 11:12
  I'm not too far off with that, I don't think, but that's a big vision.
• 11:15
  It's a big vision.
• 11:16
  think you have to be a little crazy to try it, right?
• 11:20
  But fortunately, I am a little crazy.
• 11:22
  But that's, that's, that's yeah.
• 11:24
  Everything that was ever started was crazy.
• 11:26
  Right.
• 11:27
  So kudos to you.
• 11:28
  Good for you.
• 11:30
  Good.
• 11:31
  So the question becomes, you know, when I think about, Washington, you know, there are lots of different terms given to it.
• 11:40
  Some of them are flattering.
• 11:42
  Most of them are not flattering.
• 11:44
  a swamp.
• 11:46
  Yeah, that's a good one.
• 11:47
  Let's go with that.
• 11:47
  So when you think about,
• 11:50
  Washington, it's a swamp and there's also a lot of self-serving interests there.
• 11:57
  And so the question becomes, how do you crack the code when there's really a lot of financial incentives lined up around, let's say the status quo, whether it's pharma,
• 12:06
  whether it's hospital systems, whether it's physicians, whether it's drug development, new drug development, new therapy development, that kind of stuff.
• 12:16
  How do you...
• 12:19
  think that you're gonna go in there to that swamp and actually make a difference.
• 12:22
  How are you going about that?
• 12:25
  Yeah, well, you know, one one mid 20 year old guy up against the machine of Washington is it's a you know, it's a David versus Goliath situation for sure.
• 12:36
  Unfortunately.
• 12:38
  David against Goliath.
• 12:39
  think it's more like David against the rest of the, I don't know.
• 12:43
  mean, Goliath's not big enough, Yeah, exactly.
• 12:48
  It's definitely a challenge.
• 12:50
  But fortunately, you know, when you talk about incentivization, it's there for people to embrace longevity.
• 12:58
  When you're a member of Congress, what you care about obviously is, you know, passing laws to benefit the country, but you really also care about getting reelected and making your
• 13:08
  constituents happy.
• 13:11
  There is a beautiful economic analysis called the longevity dividend.
• 13:14
  And I'm not sure if your audience is familiar with it or not.
• 13:17
  let's hear about the longevity difference.
• 13:19
  Sure, yes.
• 13:19
  So it describes what happens to GDP and economically when one average healthy year of life expectancy is added to a population.
• 13:30
  And there are a number of iterations of the longevity dividend out there, but generally the range for added GDP for one extra year of healthy life expectancy is between three-ish
• 13:42
  to $38 trillion.
• 13:46
  Let me get this straight.
• 13:47
  This is for if you added one year of healthy lifespan to every individual in the country.
• 13:53
  Yes, exactly.
• 14:01
  Everybody understands GDP.
• 14:04
  Everybody understands why GDP would go up.
• 14:08
  When you break it down, it becomes very obvious.
• 14:11
  If we can keep people out of hospitals and participating in the economy, that's a grower of the GDP.
• 14:19
  Yeah, you take away the minuses and you continue to compound the pluses.
• 14:23
  Exactly.
• 14:25
  And so that's the greatest drive, you know, incentive driver of any, you know, that that those numbers there are compelling as compelling as any number you can.
• 14:34
  That's surprisingly compelling.
• 14:36
  Like I would not have guessed that.
• 14:37
  I would have said, oh, it's going to be some billions.
• 14:40
  I mean, if you're talking about everybody in the country, it's going to be some billions of dollars, but 37 trillion.
• 14:47
  I mean, that's the high range.
• 14:48
  That's the high range.
• 14:49
  I was going to say that's like the size of the entire economy, if I'm not mistaken.
• 14:54
  like one, one and a half times the size of that.
• 14:57
  It's actually about equal to the national debt.
• 15:00
  right?
• 15:01
  Which is, we won't get into that conversation.
• 15:03
  the, that's, mean, it's a phenomenal impact.
• 15:08
  It's a phenomenal impact when you look at it that way.
• 15:12
  And what I say
• 15:13
  Do people agree with you that this is what it is?
• 15:15
  On the high end?
• 15:16
  What's the low end?
• 15:17
  About like 2.7 trillion.
• 15:20
  Okay.
• 15:21
  it's widespread.
• 15:22
  Yeah, it's widespread.
• 15:23
  regardless of what it is, an extra $3 trillion to the US's GDP is substantial.
• 15:30
  It's massive.
• 15:31
  And that's for one year, right?
• 15:33
  So what happens when we do this for five years or 10 years?
• 15:36
  I'll bet there's something here if you do it for five years, it's more than additive.
• 15:40
  It probably has a compounding element.
• 15:42
  Is that math math to have been done also?
• 15:45
  I so so the other in that $37 trillion paper, also look at what would happen if it was increased to 10 years, and it's about 370 trillion.
• 15:59
  so they did it a little bit more just straight multiplication.
• 16:03
  which those numbers to me also are like, wow, I mean, I can't even wrap my head around $370 trillion.
• 16:08
  That's an impossible number for people to wrap their heads around.
• 16:11
  Yeah.
• 16:12
  But, you know, the the importance of that paper is not the number, it's the fact that any amount of trillions is worth it here, because there's the other the other end of the
• 16:24
  spectrum is, you know, obviously economic, but moral, right?
• 16:28
  We have a moral duty as a government as a society to keep people healthy.
• 16:32
  for as long as possible.
• 16:33
  The reason why we have houses and we have jobs and cars and the cars have seat belts and we have pharmacies and doctors and et cetera, we've built society to keep people alive,
• 16:44
  right?
• 16:45
  So this is part of what we've been doing for our entire history.
• 16:48
  Yeah.
• 16:48
  And I think the moral mandate is there.
• 16:50
  Unfortunately, when you look at the government, it hasn't always aligned with the moral mandate.
• 16:58
  Right.
• 16:58
  I think this is where economic interests come in.
• 17:01
  So let's look at it through a selfish economic perspective, because that's many times the lens that is looked at through.
• 17:08
  You know, if you're doing, let's get the low end of it.
• 17:10
  Let's say you're doing 2.7.
• 17:12
  Let's round it up to $3 trillion.
• 17:15
  You know, what's interesting about that is if you look at what the healthcare spend is, right, in a given year, it's about, what is it now, four or five trillion dollars.
• 17:26
  So if you're, if you're adding three trillion, you know, you, you, you've actually, let's say you're invested in, you make a lot of money out of that five trillion that gets spent,
• 17:37
  right.
• 17:38
  Because, you know,
• 17:39
  you're invested in sick care and keeping people sick or whatever, whatever, you know, scenario people want to talk about.
• 17:47
  but if there's another 3 trillion coming in, it's like, my gosh, well, there's an opportunity we're going to more than offset.
• 17:53
  We're going to more than offset what we lose on one side by what we're going to be able to gain on the other side.
• 17:59
  Plus the added wisdom of people as they advance through life being healthy, right?
• 18:05
  Cause I think this is the other piece that's missed is that.
• 18:08
  You know, we have this perception.
• 18:09
  This is in the longevity space for sure.
• 18:11
  We have this perception that as people age, they decline.
• 18:14
  But in true longevity, as people age and you know, our concept of longevity is to end up with a 30 year old body and a 300 slash 3000 year old mind.
• 18:23
  Right.
• 18:23
  So not only do you get that economic return, but now you're getting the psycho spiritual intellectual wisdom return of people that are older, but now have greater perspective and
• 18:33
  can bring more.
• 18:35
  wisdom into the economy, into the country itself, right?
• 18:39
  So I think that's really probably difficult to measure, but I think that's also massive.
• 18:43
  Absolutely.
• 18:44
  you know, just a slight digression, you know, I've always believed that our politicians should be of older ages.
• 18:50
  They are the ones who have seen the most and the ones that have experienced the most.
• 18:54
  But the barrier for an effective older politician is the fact that their physical
• 19:01
  Yeah, that's right.
• 19:02
  We can remedy that, you know, we can gain from their experience and wisdom without having to watch people, you know, fall down and stop speaking and things like that.
• 19:13
  when you go to Washington and you roll this concept out of the longevity dividend, let's say you roll out 37 trillion, I'm sure people look at you a little bit cockeyed.
• 19:25
  Even if you rolled out 3 trillion, would still get people's attention.
• 19:30
  And maybe even with a little more credibility.
• 19:35
  Yeah.
• 19:35
  Okay.
• 19:36
  All right.
• 19:36
  Got it.
• 19:37
  So, but what's the reception that you get when you talk to people about this?
• 19:42
  How do people look at that?
• 19:43
  you know, it's, like you said, a little a little bit of bewilderment, a little bit of amusement, they you know, it's almost an unbelievable number.
• 19:55
  The 37 trillion is at least right.
• 19:57
  Right.
• 19:58
  And so partially, you know, that's why I give a range.
• 20:01
  But also, I make sure to hammer home that no matter what the actual number is, we know what the range is, if it's $10 trillion, that is still more than worth
• 20:14
  shooting for our national health care expenditure by 2028 is projected to hit I believe seven and a half trillion.
• 20:21
  So we also frame this in the kind of context of we don't have we're approaching the edge of a cliff here.
• 20:30
  Right?
• 20:30
  This is a cliff that every country in the world is facing but America too.
• 20:36
  We're spending more money than anybody else on health care costs.
• 20:39
  So we should be the most focused on increasing longevity and
• 20:43
  delivering next generation therapeutics and interventions to get us there.
• 20:47
  Yeah.
• 20:48
  Well, there's that statement in itself is very multifaceted as to why we're spending more than any of our country.
• 20:56
  That being said, that being said, even taking all that, it just simply at face value.
• 21:02
  You would think that from a moral perspective, there would be a reason to look at it.
• 21:06
  I guess the question I'm asking, though, is with people's
• 21:09
  financial incentives because they have stock in one company or another company or a company that's benefiting from one situation or another situation.
• 21:20
  I found that people tend to be short-sighted.
• 21:23
  They tend to be selfish and short-sighted.
• 21:26
  And I don't think humans are particularly bright, quite honestly, for this reason.
• 21:30
  We're not a particularly bright species, which is why we're on...
• 21:34
  you know, the verge of running ourselves into bankruptcy and maybe blowing ourselves up or creating an AI that could wipe us all out.
• 21:40
  Right.
• 21:40
  So that being said, I think, I'm just curious how you are able to speak to people in a way that actually gets them to buy into a bigger vision of goodness for themselves.
• 21:54
  Right.
• 21:54
  Right.
• 21:55
  Well, you know, fortunately also, like I mentioned, members of Congress are older and so this is something that they care about.
• 22:02
  Right.
• 22:03
  You know, I was about to disagree with you.
• 22:06
  I think humans are, I mean, clearly the most brilliant species out there.
• 22:13
  What do you got?
• 22:13
  Dolphins?
• 22:15
  No, well, dolphins are, I think, are better than we are.
• 22:17
  Yeah, I mean...
• 22:19
  I would disagree with you, but humans are definitely the most selfish of the species out there, right?
• 22:25
  which is not very intelligent.
• 22:27
  Right.
• 22:28
  But you know, it probably comes from some evolutionary trait that we've developed, right?
• 22:33
  And you know, when we were back in the caves, we need to be selfish in order to make our family survive.
• 22:39
  I would argue it's a defect that if we don't overcome is actually going to be difficult for us to survive that trait.
• 22:45
  Regardless, we are selfish, though, right?
• 22:48
  And so, you know, playing into not only this economic argument and the moral argument to, you know, care about your neighbors and do this for the people that you love, but really
• 22:58
  making it about the person and the member, the staffer that you're talking about really helps drive the point home.
• 23:06
  We want to live in a world where if you're if I'm talking to a 30 year old staffer, do you want to live in a world 30 years from now where you're going through the same thing that
• 23:14
  your grandfather or your
• 23:16
  parent is going through right now.
• 23:17
  Right.
• 23:17
  And if you're 60 years old, or 50 years old, and you're starting to deal with these issues, you know, do you want to not only continue on this path, but do you want this for
• 23:27
  your child or grandchildren?
• 23:29
  So if you make it personal, personal and relatable, in that sense, it drives the point home a lot more.
• 23:36
  I agree.
• 23:36
  A hundred percent agree with you on that.
• 23:38
  I think that that is right.
• 23:39
  You have to make it personal.
• 23:40
  So let's say you meet the people and you've made it personal and they have a personal connection to it now.
• 23:45
  What kind of, what kind of actions are, are coming out of that?
• 23:49
  Are they, it legislation that you're putting forward to do things?
• 23:55
  Tell us a little bit about what, the actual initiatives are that you're trying to get, get them to actually enact.
• 24:02
  Sure.
• 24:03
  So we started out in 2022.
• 24:06
  Our first big goal as an organization was to get together a congressional caucus on longevity science, which we did in early 2023.
• 24:15
  To go back to our earlier point, the caucus is bipartisan led by Congressman Paul Tonko and Gus Bilirakis, which I like to give myself a little pat on the back for.
• 24:24
  But like we were saying before, is not, and living healthier for longer.
• 24:29
  is not a partisan issue.
• 24:30
  It's not something that discriminates across political lines, racial lines, or whatever lines you want to draw.
• 24:37
  It doesn't discriminate, right?
• 24:38
  This is an innate human desire to want to live healthy and long.
• 24:43
  And so we put that together in early 2023 with the idea that that would be sort of the launch pad for legislative initiatives into the future.
• 24:53
  Later in 2023, and we also mentioned this before, we helped pass a bill
• 24:58
  SB 422 in the state government of Montana that expands eligibility under the Right to Try law.
• 25:05
  So Right to Try was a piece of legislation that started out in the states, became federal legislation in the first Trump administration, and it allows terminally ill patients the
• 25:15
  right to access therapeutics that are not fully approved by FDA.
• 25:20
  The issue with that for our longevity community and this whole mindset is we shouldn't have to wait until we're terminally ill
• 25:27
  to try to remain healthy, right?
• 25:30
  Once you're terminally ill, it's very difficult to actually revert back to a state of true health.
• 25:35
  And so we should be intervening in the process of getting terminally ill far before we actually get the disease that classifies us as terminally ill.
• 25:42
  So what we did in Montana is we took the existing law, we changed some of the language, and now all patients, whether you're healthy or terminally ill, have the right to try in
• 25:51
  Montana.
• 25:52
  The one caveat there is
• 25:55
  If you are a healthy patient, classified as a healthy patient, you can access therapeutics that have only passed phase one safety trials.
• 26:02
  We did not want to give people drugs or therapeutics that would make them sick, but beyond that, we should be attempting to intervene and mitigate the damages of aging and disease
• 26:14
  before it becomes a full blown catastrophe.
• 26:17
  Yeah, that's fantastic that you're able to get that done.
• 26:21
  and I had a conversation with you and the Senator from Montana about this five, six months ago.
• 26:29
  and, Aubrey DeGray for that matter, just for the audience, we're rolling the call together.
• 26:34
  so the interesting thing is that Montana chose to do this.
• 26:39
  I don't think of Montana necessarily as being the most.
• 26:43
  cutting edge, forward thin love Montana.
• 26:45
  It's beauti I've been there many times
• 26:56
  It's so I met Ken through a personal friend, a friend that I actually made at a longevity conference.
• 27:05
  And Ken was completely new to this field.
• 27:07
  When I talked to him, it was the first time he had heard about longevity, but it really resonated with him from the aspect of, know, this is the next big thing, right?
• 27:17
  This longevity is what AI was five years ago and what crypto was 10 years ago.
• 27:23
  being at the forefront of this is
• 27:25
  not only a way to highlight yourself as a politician, but it's a way to put yourself down in the history books in a very true sense.
• 27:34
  And so I think that part definitely resonated with Ken also, obviously, the fact that longevity science means that his parents and he and everybody that he loves would not have
• 27:43
  to suffer the same fate as people before us.
• 27:46
  And Ken is a young man.
• 27:47
  What, Ken's what, in his 30s or 40s, something like that?
• 27:52
  Late 30s.
• 27:52
  There you go.
• 27:53
  Yeah, he's not an older gentleman.
• 27:55
  No, no, no.
• 27:57
  Yeah, no, Ken is a fascinating individual in his own right.
• 28:00
  But I think this longevity aspect of his of his makes him even more fascinating and compelling as a politician and a political figure.
• 28:08
  I'll tell you what I like about this.
• 28:10
  I like about the fact that you are, you know, started this in your early twenties.
• 28:14
  You've got Ken and his called back half of his thirties.
• 28:19
  You know, it's not, it's not the people that are in their seventies or eighties that are, that are advocating for this.
• 28:23
  It's, it's youth that's actually advocating for this.
• 28:26
  And when I speak about longevity, I find that there's a really a very powerful resonance to this message with young people.
• 28:35
  because they've all seen their parents and their grandparents.
• 28:37
  now they actually, think because they maybe have more mental flexibility, are able to embrace the concept that, hey, okay, maybe there is a different path here.
• 28:47
  And so that's very exciting.
• 28:48
  So I would think this would be exciting for the state of Montana also because, you know, the opportunity to go there as a practitioner and open up a clinic and be able to actually
• 28:58
  administer therapies to people is very exciting.
• 29:03
  So.
• 29:04
  That's very, very cool.
• 29:05
  think it spools up a whole bunch of things that I'm sure the entire state must be thinking about.
• 29:12
  Absolutely.
• 29:12
  You know, I'll give a little more context as to why I wanted why I pushed for this.
• 29:17
  So in 2023, I spent a lot of time traveling the world really going to different longevity hotspots conferences, you know, getting my feet wet in the field as much as I could.
• 29:29
  And what I've seen are people going to places like Mexico and now Honduras and Costa Rica and places in Eastern Europe to get these experimental therapies, right, right.
• 29:40
  From a consumer standpoint, I don't know about you, but if I had $100 million and I wanted to go get an experimental treatment, I would prefer to stay in the US.
• 29:50
  That's my preference.
• 29:51
  Maybe not everybody agrees, but I think most people would probably agree with that.
• 29:54
  Well, I think people want to go where there's expertise.
• 29:57
  I think, you know, athletes have been going to Europe for, you know, decades when they couldn't get things in the U S but they knew they could go to Germany or someplace and get
• 30:06
  something done.
• 30:07
  Right.
• 30:07
  So I think, I think it's not so much, I think people are attracted to expertise and yes, the convenience of staying closer to home.
• 30:14
  But if you have the expertise in the U S and you create an environment where that expertise can both drop in and be, you know, fertilized and grown.
• 30:23
  That's very compelling, I think.
• 30:24
  Absolutely.
• 30:25
  Yeah.
• 30:26
  And yeah, I agree with you 100%.
• 30:28
  The expertise is here in the US.
• 30:30
  You know, the US is the leading country in the world, right?
• 30:34
  So forcing people to go to countries that are less experienced and have less expertise is bad for the consumer.
• 30:41
  But then from the US, from the US's standpoint, medical tourism is a rapidly growing industry.
• 30:50
  know, billions of dollars a year are spent on medical tourism.
• 30:55
  Why are we as a country allowing people to leave the country to spend money?
• 30:59
  And why aren't we attracting people from around the world, you know, because of these regulations to spend money here in the US?
• 31:06
  from a consumer and from a government standpoint, you know, this was a no brainer from my perspective.
• 33:27
  Did you ever, I'm curious, did you ever have any conversations with insurance carriers around this?
• 33:32
  Because one of the reasons that medicine is expensive in the US is the malpractice components of it.
• 33:41
  And when you're doing things like this, they're not covered by insurance.
• 33:48
  And yet you have physicians that could theoretically be
• 33:52
  you know, sued over something potentially.
• 33:55
  I'm sure there are things that have to be signed, et cetera, et cetera, but that's never precluded anybody from suing anybody.
• 34:00
  So is there any, is there any input from the insurance industry here or the hospital industry, or is this just, this whole thing just reside sort of separate from both those
• 34:12
  entities?
• 34:13
  Yeah, this resides mainly with the consumer and provider.
• 34:16
  know, insurance is not required, or the bill at least does not require insurance companies to cover the cost of these investigational treatments.
• 34:25
  And so it is to some extent kind of prohibitive just because, you know, many people can't go and afford the latest biotech companies therapeutic.
• 34:35
  But what we were hoping is that people who are willing to try and have the capital to do so would try.
• 34:42
  and use the data from their experience taking whatever drug, whatever therapeutic to help advance our knowledge of that therapeutic and intervention, right?
• 34:53
  And it's sort of an N equals one experiment that I know obviously those aren't, you know, perfect or great, but anecdotes have their place in medicine to some extent.
• 35:00
  That's why we're seeing people take ivermectin for cancer treatments, right?
• 35:05
  And so, you know, that is something that we would like to address, but you know, we can't also,
• 35:11
  require insurance companies to cover a $100,000.
• 35:17
  Right.
• 35:17
  No, I get that.
• 35:18
  I just didn't know if they were somehow trying to weigh in on this or the hospitals were trying to weigh in on this in some way because you've got a parallel sort of system
• 35:27
  happening.
• 35:28
  Right.
• 35:29
  So but it doesn't sound like that's the case.
• 35:33
  Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating.
• 35:35
  I think it creates lots of opportunity for getting this really kind of spooled up.
• 35:41
  I can imagine that
• 35:45
  There are lot of really interesting and innovative technologies that we're involved with.
• 35:50
  and some we'd like to be involved with that have passed phase one trials, but are still, you know, tied up in the FDA process.
• 35:59
  But, in Montana, we could bring people in there and simply use utilize them.
• 36:03
  and I'm sure that biotech is pretty excited about that too, because it enables them to collect more data on things and understand and make it better and safer for everybody.
• 36:14
  Right.
• 36:14
  So.
• 36:15
  Yeah, it's a and potentially generate revenue.
• 36:19
  Yeah, exactly.
• 36:20
  Right.
• 36:22
  Yeah, that's right.
• 36:23
  How do we have invested, you know, however many millions, billions and now how do we get in some return?
• 36:29
  Right.
• 36:29
  get that.
• 36:31
  Yeah.
• 36:32
  So it's it's really pretty interesting.
• 36:33
  Now, this probably includes procedures as well as therapeutics like, you know, stem cells or pharma or
• 36:45
  processes or things like that.
• 36:47
  that true?
• 36:48
  Is there any limitations to this, or is it just any sort of phase one, approved, you know, medical device slash therapy slash, drug slash whatever.
• 37:02
  So this is strictly for drugs and therapeutics that are in the FDA clinical trial pipeline.
• 37:09
  you know, procedures, things like that are not covered or mentioned in SB 422, but I'm glad to report that I'm actually working with Ken now again on some pieces of policy that
• 37:25
  I'll keep quiet for now.
• 37:29
  Imagine it's going to expand things a little bit.
• 37:31
  Exactly, exactly.
• 37:33
  stay tuned.
• 37:34
  psychedelics.
• 37:35
  I'm curious about that because there are states now in the US that have approved psychedelics like Oregon and Colorado and places like that.
• 37:43
  I don't know that Montana is one of those states and I don't know if this is if there's an intersection there between psychedelic assisted therapies and that sort of thing.
• 37:53
  Is that a piece of this as well or is that still not really part of this?
• 37:58
  It's so psychedelics aren't like word for word mentioned in the bill in any way.
• 38:05
  But the bill does expand access to investigational drugs and therapeutics that have passed phase one.
• 38:11
  if, for example, a company is doing something with ketamine or, you know, so I've been right, that would fall under the purview of what's accessible under SB 422.
• 38:24
  So, you know, we I
• 38:26
  look, I I'm not in the psychedelic world in any way, or form, although there is a compelling argument for it, because, you know, why would people want to live longer if
• 38:34
  they're depressed?
• 38:35
  Or, you know, why do people care about that if they're depressed?
• 38:38
  So there is a you know, there is a synergistic relationship between what the psychedelics industry is doing and what we're doing in the longevity industry.
• 38:45
  we did not, you know, put that in the bill in any way, or form.
• 38:48
  But you know, the interpretation of the bill could be such that it it covers psychedelic treatments that are in
• 38:54
  Yeah, they are being studied, of course, at places like Johns Hopkins and other places.
• 38:58
  Right.
• 38:59
  And really demonstrating some phenomenal successes, really, not only for cancer patients, for people suffering from, you know, intractable depression or anxiety or PTSD or some of
• 39:11
  the other disorders that really don't have any great therapies for it.
• 39:15
  So, yeah, very exciting stuff.
• 39:18
  anecdotal evidence, but I do have a friend who participated in the ketamine clinical trial.
• 39:24
  And he reports that he doesn't have depression the same way he did.
• 39:27
  Right.
• 39:28
  So it's very exciting.
• 39:31
  And the government allowing people to try is really what we need to have happen.
• 39:36
  Right.
• 39:36
  The government acting as a roadblock for innovation is the issue.
• 39:40
  So that's part of what SB422 is addressing.
• 39:43
  Right.
• 39:43
  would think that one of the critical things to do in a situation like this would be to be collecting data.
• 39:50
  And I'm sure the companies are potentially collecting data in the bill.
• 39:54
  Was there any mention made of a kind of uniform data collection process or program or you're leaving that up to the company or the clinician or somebody or how's that work?
• 40:07
  yeah.
• 40:07
  So in, the bill, there was nothing specifically requiring data collection.
• 40:12
  but you know, part of what we're trying to do in this go around in the Montana legislative session is add a provision that incentivizes people to share their clinical data with the
• 40:24
  companies.
• 40:25
  Okay.
• 40:26
  You know, Montana is a very unique political state.
• 40:29
  They're sort of, know, they're, they're libertarian more so than I would say conservative.
• 40:34
  and with being libertarian, you know, they keep the mindset of, know, let me do my thing.
• 40:39
  These companies and governments out of my hair and let me go hang out on my ranch.
• 40:44
  Right.
• 40:44
  Yeah.
• 40:45
  so we didn't want to require people in the state because of that fact, to, have to share their data with, companies.
• 40:53
  However, there should be some incentive because that has lost data, which is lost.
• 40:59
  It's very valuable.
• 41:00
  So we're working to address that here in 2025.
• 41:03
  Okay.
• 41:03
  That makes good sense.
• 41:04
  Yeah.
• 41:05
  Montana's land of the free home of the brave, right?
• 41:08
  Absolutely.
• 41:08
  A bit like Texas.
• 41:09
  So are there other states that you're targeting as well or that you have your eye on for similar legislation?
• 41:18
  Or do you feel like Montana is a unique kind of constellation of, you know, legislation and general populist mentality?
• 41:27
  Or what do you think there?
• 41:28
  So I would love to see what we did in Montana go federal.
• 41:34
  the fact of the matter is Montana is a state with not many people in it.
• 41:38
  Not many people can get to Montana, right?
• 41:40
  It's a difficult state to get to.
• 41:42
  So if we were to do this nationwide, it would be it would open up access to more people in their home states.
• 41:49
  Right?
• 41:50
  You're taking up with on the hill, so to speak.
• 41:53
  That is one of our policy points that we're pushing forward.
• 41:57
  I would say because we passed SB 422 in Montana, I'm less concerned about that than some of our other initiatives because what we also need is more research and development into
• 42:08
  the therapeutics that will help us live healthier and longer.
• 42:11
  Right.
• 42:11
  And right now we don't really have much that's proven to be effective in extending our healthy lifespan.
• 42:17
  There are things like rapamycin and metformin which have some pretty compelling
• 42:21
  data in mice and humans, but you know, we don't have anything definitively that we know will extend our healthy human lifespan.
• 42:29
  So we need to invest in technology development, we need to invest in drug and therapeutic development to get us to the point where things actually work well.
• 42:39
  Sure.
• 42:40
  Yeah.
• 42:40
  And to your point about, rapid myosin and metformin, even those have come under scrutiny with, additional trials.
• 42:46
  They're not, they're not, quite the gold standard people hoping they might be.
• 42:51
  So, congratulations on the work you're doing.
• 42:54
  I mean, that's really, it's really impressive.
• 42:56
  Again, I commend you for, having the big vision and you know, the big, I don't know, willpower, put spot to basically.
• 43:06
  take on such a project and on getting Montana.
• 43:12
  you know, think it's whenever you're building a movement like this, it's really a combination of stepping stones, right?
• 43:17
  And I know you know this.
• 43:18
  So, anything we can do to be helpful to you, be delighted to do that, of course.
• 43:24
  Well, you are participating in our annual DC summit at the end of April, which I could end sponsoring a four ally, which I couldn't be more thrilled about getting you on the Hill
• 43:37
  speaking to staffers and members of Congress will be a great boost for us.
• 43:42
  So I appreciate your participation in a four ally.
• 43:45
  And I encourage everybody else listening.
• 43:47
  If you're a doctor, a biotech executive, a researcher to get involved with what we're doing because
• 43:52
  You know, one 26 year old on the hill is not going to get this done.
• 43:56
  We need everybody.
• 43:57
  This is a coalition we're building and we need everybody's support.
• 44:01
  And so where do people go to contact you?
• 44:05
  There's a website, just remind them where they would go.
• 44:09
  You go to Google type in a four li, can say four li.org in your search bar.
• 44:15
  You can anybody feel free to reach out to me.
• 44:18
  I'm always looking to talk to people that are interested in moving this moving this movement this moving the needle.
• 44:26
  Yeah, I got lost there.
• 44:28
  Moving this forward, right?
• 44:29
  My email is Dylan at a four li.org a for the number four li.org.
• 44:35
  And
• 44:37
  I encourage everybody listening to at least become a member of a four li.
• 44:42
  The way that these, you know, broad movements receive the resources they need to pay down the costs of lobbying and policy development and, and social advocacy campaigns is by a
• 44:56
  lot of small dollar donations.
• 44:58
  So we have a membership system that's $60 a year.
• 45:01
  That's five bucks a month.
• 45:02
  You know, that's one less coffee at
• 45:05
  Starbucks, which if you substitute the A4LI membership out for a Starbucks coffee, that's probably a double whammy for your longevity.
• 45:12
  right.
• 45:13
  And the way that we want to move forward is with, you know, as many people as possible supporting us and involved with the initiatives that we're pushing forward.
• 45:24
  The way that AARP, the reason why AARP is so effective is because they have 30 million Americans paying about a hundred bucks a year to support their
• 45:34
  political agenda.
• 45:35
  The reason why NRA is so effective is because they have 5 million people paying 100 bucks a year to advance their legislative priorities.
• 45:45
  And so we're looking to replicate that model.
• 45:48
  And so I encourage everybody, 60 bucks a year, 5 bucks a month, support what we're doing.
• 45:53
  It goes towards the actual advocacy effort.
• 45:57
  And it allows us to not only hire more people to get the job done, but produce more
• 46:03
  compelling arguments, more compelling policy, more thoughtful policy.
• 46:08
  you know, policy is what's going to direct this field and really give it the boost it needs.
• 46:13
  Private industry is great.
• 46:15
  I love the private industry, but, you know, there needs to be some interaction by the government if we're going to really accelerate this thing.
• 46:22
  Beautiful.
• 46:23
  All right.
• 46:24
  Well, thank you so much.
• 46:26
  And Dylan, really kudos to the work you're doing and I'll look forward to seeing you in Washington in April.
• 46:33
  Absolutely, absolutely.
• 46:35
  Thanks Dr.
• 46:35
  Gladden.
• 46:36
  I'll see you soon.
• 46:36
  See you soon.