Friedberg @ 01:23:40Inconclusive
healthscience
At some future point (implicit multi-decade horizon), advances in tools such as induced stem cells, cell-based therapies, and gene editing will progress to the point that both cancer and biological aging are effectively ‘resolved’ as diseases in humans, analogous to how HIV has become a manageable or curable condition.
I think hopefully. And I'm optimistic that one day we will look back at cancer and aging in the same way that we're talking about HIV today, and that both of those diseases can and will be resolved with the tools that we're developing through science.View on YouTube
Explanation
As of late 2025, the core condition of the prediction has not yet come true:
- HIV today: With combination antiretroviral therapy, HIV has been transformed from an almost uniformly fatal infection into a long‑term, manageable chronic condition for many patients, with near‑normal life expectancy when treatment is accessible and adhered to.(aids.org)
- Cancer status: Cancer remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The WHO and NCI report ~20 million new cancer cases and ~9–10 million deaths globally in 2022, with over 2 million new cases and ~618,000 deaths projected in the U.S. alone for 2025.(cancer.gov) While treatments (including targeted therapies, immunotherapy, and some cell/gene-based approaches) have improved survival for many cancers, there is no broadly applicable cure or "resolved" status analogous to well-controlled HIV.
- Biological aging: Aging is still viewed as a complex, multifactorial biological process and a dominant risk factor for disease and death, not a condition that has been clinically "resolved". Recent work emphasizes organ-specific biological aging (e.g., brain aging as a strong predictor of mortality), and there are experimental efforts toward rejuvenation, but no accepted medical intervention yet halts or reverses human aging in the way the prediction envisions.(ft.com)
However, the time horizon baked into the quote is explicitly open‑ended and long term: “one day we will look back at cancer and aging in the same way that we’re talking about HIV today” and that these diseases “can and will be resolved” with future tools. The podcast aired in February 2022, so only about 3–4 years have passed—far short of a typical multi‑decade biomedical horizon for wholesale “resolution” of cancer and aging.
Because:
- The outcome state (cancer and aging effectively resolved like modern HIV) has clearly not been reached yet, but
- The prediction does not specify a concrete deadline and is framed as a distant future possibility,
there is not enough elapsed time to fairly label it right or wrong. The appropriate status, given the long implicit horizon, is "inconclusive (too early)" rather than "wrong."