The problem with longevity research and its funding is not so much the research or the science, but the cultural stigma[^1]. Secretly, everybody wants to feel, look and be healthy and young. But as virtue-signaling and because otherwise we would go mad, we tend to say that we are happy with our time in the world.

Also, I can't remember a single mainstream book[^1], movie or tv-series where the guys who want to live beyond their natural lifespans are not the antagonists.

We need mainstream movies, tv-series and books where the guys who want to live longer are the good guys and they do it through science. That instead of, say, a dramatization of the life of Elizabeth Báthory, or another vampire movie. In other words, we are very much in need of a cultural movement that makes socially acceptable to fund and to work in these types of projects.

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[^1]: Somebody already commented here that it's better to put that money into fighting infant mortality. As often the case with moonshots, it's easy to find more "rational" things to allocate the money to.

[^2]: I guess there are some people in the Bible that live for a long time. Maybe priests talk about them at mass sometimes?