[exratione]

If by "highly controversial" you mean "supported by many leading names in the research community" then sure. See this, and note the presence of George Church, Judith Campisi, Maria Blasco, etc:

http://sens.org/about/leadership/research-advisory-board

The SENS Research Foundation has a yearly budget about a tenth of that of one of the largest aging research labs, the Buck Institute. The Foundation funds work in a range of laboratories around in the US and Europe, and has collaborations with Oxford, Wake Forest, and so forth.

Insofar as controversy exists, you might look on it as a facet of the present dispute over modern theories of aging: camps for aging as accumulated damage versus aging as evolved programming. The accumulated damage side is much bigger but split into several factions, one of which is centered around SENS.