The ravages of age come for us all, and while biohacker Bryan Johnson is trying to live forever, even he can't stop Father Time.
Even though Benjamin Button remains a work of fiction, one doctor claims he's been able to reverse biological aging by up to 75%.
Away from Johnson, maintaining that we'll be able to crack human immortality by 2039, Dr. David Sinclair is making headway on his own scientific mission to reverse aging.
As a tenured professor at Harvard's Department of Genetics, Sinclair has previously made a name for himself amid claims he's been able to 'reverse' biological aging on test subjects by up to 75%.
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Speaking at February 2026's World Government Summit, Sinclair explained how most of us are likely to have at least five serious illnesses by the age of 80, meaning it's not simply a case of curing cancer.
He's previously compared our DNA to music on a CD, with aging being similar to scratches. If we can effectively buff the CD, we should be able to reverse aging.
Sinclair suggests that the next few months will be critical to the future of his work, but it's sure to come at a cost to both researchers and the general public alike.
Some people are already paying upwards of $15,000 a year to be members of longevity clinics, while it's said that Johnson spends $2 million a year in his quest to cheat death. Although others are currently splashing out around $50,000 on stem cell injections, the true cost of reversing aging could be much higher.
When it comes to choosing whether to save up and buy a house or buy yourself a few more years on Earth, it could become a genuine decision of future generations.
A July 2025 report posted in Biogerontology mentioned how "high costs remain a significant barrier to the accessibility of longevity medicine." There are examples of how Casgevy's FDA-approved CRISPR (clustered interspaced short palindromic repeats) therapy is priced at $2.2 million per treatment, while Lygenia is a competitor that offers sickle cell disease gene therapy at $3.1 million.
Although it's noted that high costs are likely associated with the rarity of these conditions, the idea of living forever likely won't come cheap.
Thankfully, WiredJA reports that automation is already bringing costs down. In terms of gene therapy, it's already dropping from $1-2 million a dose to around $100,000.
That same article mentions Sinclair's "one-week cellular age reversal in the lab," which could supposedly leapfrog years of traditional scientific development.
Looking at a potential roadmap, age reversal could work reliably in humans by 2027. Even with AI-accelerated discovery, those early age-reversal treatments are still projected to come in at a hefty $2 million.
The good news is that a massive expansion of the industry should drive prices down to $100,000 by 2032. Still, this is a period when insurance companies and the FDA would target the likes of cognitive decline.
Middle-class accessibility is tipped to arrive before 2038, making traditional retirement planning obsolete as treatments cost as little as $10,000. Looking even further ahead, so-called 'species upgrade' and age-reversal treatments could cost as little as $1,000 by the time we get to 2045.
Even though there are lots of ifs and buts, there's the interesting twist that age-reversing tech could save healthcare systems trillions, meaning insurers and the government might eventually subsidize it. That all sounds like something from some futuristic sci-fi novel, but for now, Sinclair's work continues.