US Department of Health & Human Services

This month, after several Senate confirmation hearings, Jim O’Neill has been sworn in as Number Two at the Department of Health and Human Services. This department oversees the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control, Medicare, Medicaid, and much more.

Jim’s ascent is an opportunity to mainstream an understanding that aging, with its many mental and physical afflictions, need not be our fate.

Jim also served at HHS from 2002 to 2008, so he knows the ins and outs of this government department of 62,000 employees. But most important, he served for years as CEO of the SENS Research Foundation. As most friends of Humanity Plus know, SENS was the premiere group developing, as its initials stand for, Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence. Jim understands that rather than simply developing treatments for cancers, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and other ravages of aging once they afflict us, it is best to attack aging itself.

But science and technology are not enough. We need to raise the consciousness of the public and policymakers so they understand that we each can have truly long, vibrant lives if we make slowing or stopping aging a top goal. Jim in his perch at HHS, with the help of the longevity community, to meet this challenge!