Wisdom-inquiry science is essential for healthy longevity.

Abstract

Within a week of his 20 January 2025 inauguration, US President Donald J. Trump issued an order that froze all federal grants and loans, creating confusion and anxiety about the future of research and development in US biomedical science. The politicisation of science creates significant challenges not only for the researchers who depend on public funding to undertake their research, but also for the public understanding of why basic research is so important to the health and economic prosperity of the world's ageing populations. In 1944 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote a letter to the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush, asking Bush how science and medicine could be best harnessed to win the war of science against disease. Bush's response, in his acclaimed 1945 book entitled Science, The Endless Frontier, detailed how 'scientific capital' determines the pace and shape of technological progress. The war against disease approach to public health and medicine has helped increase life expectancy, by reducing the prevalence of premature death, but it has also contributed to the increasing global healthspan-lifespan gap, which is nearly 10 years. Translational gerontology, and in particular the goal of developing geroprotective drugs that may help fortify the 'biological resilience' needed to increase healthy life expectancy, must become an integral part of a 'wisdom-inquiry' approach to public health and medicine if the aspiration of healthy longevity is to be realised this century.