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The Longevity Initiative

@thelongevityinitiative.org

Independent think tank and educational organisation dedicated to advancing longevity science in the UK, EU and around the world. Founded by @statto.bsky.social and @kshoylev.bsky.social

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The Longevity Initiative @thelongevityinitiative.org · 30/09/2026

The longevity science community is converging on Boston for ARDD and Biomarkers of Aging… and The Longevity Initiative will be there! We’re fundraising, and looking for collaborators to bring regulation and public understanding up to speed with the latest breakthroughs in longevity science.

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The Longevity Initiative @thelongevityinitiative.org · 27/05/2026

Does NIH research funding track what actually kills Americans? Building on A4LI’s new report, we ran the numbers: and ageing fares worst. Ageing causes 83% of deaths, yet receives just 1.2% of the research funding per death that cancer does—around $1 per American per year.

Scatter plot titled "US research funding vs deaths, by cause". Subtitle: "NIH research funding of a disease or cause of death in 2024, plotted against annual US deaths from that cause in 2023. Ageing causes over 80% of US deaths, but receives just 0.8% of NIH funding."

The vertical axis shows NIH funding (2024), from 0 to $8bn. The horizontal axis shows deaths from disease (2023), from 0 to about 2.6m. Each point is a cause of death.

Most points cluster in the bottom-left corner, with low funding and low-to-moderate death counts. Cancer sits high up at roughly 720k deaths and just over $8bn in funding — the highest-funded point. Alzheimer's and coronaviruses sit high on the funding axis despite relatively few deaths. Heart disease sits low and to the right, at about 1.4m deaths but under $2bn in funding. Ageing is far to the right at around 2.6m deaths but near the very bottom of the funding axis, an extreme outlier showing huge mortality and almost no funding.

A blue annotation reads: "Cancer is involved in 23% of deaths and receives $24 per American per year". A red annotation reads: "Ageing is responsible for 83% of US deaths and receives $1 per American per year".

There is almost no correlation between how many people a disease kills and how much research funding it receives.

Chart: The Longevity Initiative. Source: RCDC Funding Survey / CDC / analysis by The Longevity Initiative. Created with Datawrapper.

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