If some predictions about the potential of treatments for the ageing process itself are right, based on a growing understanding of how to clear out senescent cells from tissues, then the cost of care for the elderly may plummet. By 2050, too, we could have experienced the long-promised ‘compression of morbidity’ by which people spend a longer time living but a shorter time dying. So far this has eluded us, as we prevent and cure sudden killers like heart disease much faster than we prevent or cure gradual killers like cancer, let alone chronic diseases like dementia. Medical innovation will
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