[jodrellblank]

> "I don't think that will be the case, as there will be a gold rush once the possibility is proven and visible, everyone will try to get it, even the naysayers."

Maybe; instead when this happens, e.g. hairloss and finasteride, I look at people desperately trying to fight aging and stay young forever and then replacing their worry about hairloss with worry about post-finasteride[1] depression and sexual side effects. Or the people who are obsessed with nootropics ('smart drugs') who are in a hyper-competitive world I don't want to be in at all. Or the people who slather vitamin A creams on their skin to try and look younger who may give themselves retinol burn[2] and Vitamin A, E supplements to look younger which may[3] gives bone pain, liver damage, birth defects, increased risk of fractures, skin irritation, increased risk of prostate cancer.

[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5047

[2] https://www.healthline.com/health/retinol-burn

[3] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/how-these... - "For context, consider that a single 3-ounce serving of pan-fried beef liver [alone] contains [over 2x the recommended daily upper limit of Vitamin A]."

[insanitybit]

Is your point that supplements have side effects? I don't think that's surprising to anyone at all.

[jodrellblank]

My point is that "once the possibility is proven and visible, everyone will try to get it, even the naysayers" is wrong. I could plausibly benefit from Finasteride, I'm not rushing for it even though I think it works. We can also see[1] which says "poor diet is recognized as the leading cause of death and disability in the United States, and the World Health Organization predicts that by 2020, two thirds of disease worldwide will exist because of a poor lifestyle.11-13 A large body of consistent evidence suggests eating a healthy diet can prevent, delay, or even reverse CVD, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, and certain cancers.14-19 The effect of such intake is rapid and profound." - yet people aren't rushing for healthy diets and exercise, are they?

And I think your claim is wrong; a lot of people pop vitamin supplements like candy expecting that they are harmless and would be surprised to find they are capable of causing harm; anecdotally I have read of people saying exactly that, which is enough to disprove "wouldn't be surprising to anyone at all".

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6506974/

[insanitybit]

> I'm not rushing for it even though I think it works

Because of the side effects, right?

> - yet people aren't rushing for healthy diets and exercise, are they?

Because that implies a lifestyle change. I think the assumption here is that this would be a treatment or a pill.

> And I think your claim is wrong; a lot of people pop vitamin supplements like candy expecting that they are harmless and would be surprised to find they are capable of causing harm;

I don't think that most people will be surprised to hear that taking any pill can have negative effects, though I do think that lots of people may be surprised by the dose at which those effects are seen, but there will always be outliers, of course, who may think that eating an entire carton of gummy vitamins is no big deal. But, I don't think that is really relevant, although I'm not sure what point you're trying to make still.

I think you're trying to say that some people won't rush to take this pill because it may have unintended side effects?

[jodrellblank]

> "although I'm not sure what point you're trying to make still."

I'm countering the claim "even naysayers will want this as soon as it works" with evidence that people don't want things which work - for multiple reasons, viz. known side effects, unknown/long term side effects, your 'implying a lifestyle change', not wanting to be early adopters, for examples we have covered, along with people who don't want to 'play God', don't approve of medical treatments, don't want 200 years of working life (as mentioned in the comments elsewhere on this thread).