Trying to manage the symptoms for heart disease, morbid obesity, cancer, Alzheimer's, and all the other diseases associated with aging just doesn't seem nearly as efficient as fixing the common problem causing all of these.
I do agree that medical research focuses too much on managing age related disease - sweeping under the carpet strategy - rather than curing (might just be a too bit fastidious about this, we might mean the same thing) but viewing aging as unitary process - that can be cured in a single stroke "fixing the common problem" - is probably not an accurate description. Aging is a number of different processes from miss-folded protein build up to an increase in number of mutations, that have in common that they build up over time and have a negative effect on our health. SENS aims to solve each of these problems separately.
I agree. Any impression I give otherwise is an artifact of my brevity.
I have just received a survey questionnaire regarding future directions in EU (European Union) research funding, and thought it would be interesting to see how LessWrong would answer the main question:
Imagine that EU funding is available for one ambitious, visionary project extending beyond 2020.