The bottom line
Longevity research is increasingly focused on extending healthy years, not simply total lifespan.
Why it matters
If healthspan improves, the implications extend far outside medicine. Retirement assumptions, insurance models, workforce participation and age-based product design all begin to change alongside the science.
From the foresight archive
Jim Carroll first published this as Megatrend #11 on 2025-07-10. He revisited it one year later on 2026-08-19, using the retrospective to test the original call against what had happened since.
In that retrospective, Carroll’s own shorthand assessment was: Nailed it, and it’s moving faster than the one-year mark usually allows. Every pillar I named — senescence, reprogramming, telomeres, mitochondria — now has a human trial attached to its name. The “longevity divide” I warned about is still the open question: none of this is priced for the average pension yet.
This page treats the 2025 article as the original foresight call and the 2026 article as the first evidence checkpoint. Later signals and scorecards can be attached without rewriting the historical record.