Large New Survey Tracks Telomere Length and Mortality

tl;dr - "Last week, a Danish study was published that tracked 65,000 people over 15 years. The bottom line was that telomere length robustly predicts longevity, even after factoring out the effect of age, smoking, exercise, blood cholesterol, BMI, and alcohol consumption."

Mitteldorf argues that short telomeres are not just a marker but a major cause of mortality, and discusses the hypothesis that short telomeres protect against cancer (a theory he doesn't subscribe to).

Is telomere length something that's relatively easy to increase with future medications? Or is it nearly impossible to get something into all your cells and get them lengthening the telomeres? (ignoring cancer risk, just curious about a potential process)

For me the most interesting conclusion (from the blog author) was that telomere-lengthening treatments may only give you an extra 5 years. But he does point out that this conclusion may be incorrect since the data measurement may need some changes.

It seems that the blog post author doesn't actually link to the new paper he discusses, nor provide a citation.

Now we need some kind of study to see if telomere length causes changes in palm line patterns... ;)

Why can't we test these ideas in mice or drosophila and get a better idea about the effects?