Jim O’Neill, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s New Right-Hand Man in Trump’s Health Agency, Wants to Extend Human Lifespan

Highlights

• As Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new right-hand man, Jim O’Neill may spur publicity and funding for longevity science.
• Amid funding cuts for biomedical research under the current presidential administration, it remains unclear what gains longevity research will be able to make under O’Neill’s influence on the HHS.

On June 9, Jim O’Neill was sworn in as deputy secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Dylan Livingston, founder and CEO of the aging research lobbying group Alliance for Longevity Initiatives (A4LI), was thrilled with this development. With key roles at A4LI, Livingston serves as a member of the longevity community, which seeks lifespan extension for humans.

Livsingston called Jim O’Neill “one of us” in a press release. Livingston added, “And now [he’s] in a position of great influence.”

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new and important assistant, O’Neill is expected to exercise authority at agencies that fund biomedical research and provide oversight for the regulation of new drugs. Moreover, even though O’Neill does not latch on to some of Kennedy’s most controversial positions, he may still direct health agencies in disputable new directions.

Although O’Neill is a lesser-known public figure than his new boss, he has gained some notoriety in the longevity community. For example, some of his acquaintances include the high-profile longevity influencer Bryan Johnson and the billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel.

People working in the longevity field share an enthusiastic optimism regarding O’Neill’s leadership. While no one can predict what he will do, many in the longevity community believe O’Neill could bring the publicity and resources to the pro-longevity cause and make it easier to experiment with potential aging intervention drugs.

A History of Working for Aging-Focused Organizations

The idea that O’Neill could catalyze the progression of the aging research field is bolstered not only by his personal and professional relationships but also by his history working at aging-focused organizations. As a notable example, O’Neill served as CEO of the SENS Research Foundation, an organization focused on research of age-related diseases, from 2019 to 2021. Along those lines, O’Neill’s work history suggests he indeed believes researchers should be working on ways to extend lifespan.

Moreover, O’Neill has also supported the idea of creating new geographic zones, even possibly at sea, where residents can set their own rules to live by. These rules include the permissive regulatory stipulations for experimental aging intervention drugs and therapies.

“In [the last three administrations] there weren’t really people like that from our field taking these positions of power,” said Livingston. Livingston added that O’Neill’s new position of authority is “definitely something to be excited about.”

Some Naysayers Think O’Neill’s Anti-Regulation Approach Could Enable Charlatans to Peddle Ineffective Therapies

Not everyone in the healthcare field views O’Neill’s new elevation in the HHS with the same enthusiasm. For example, Diana Zuckerman, the president of the National Center for Health Research, a non-profit think tank in Washington, D.C., thinks O’Neill’s new position is “worrisome.” She is especially concerned that O’Neill will promote views he has held over the years.

“There’s nothing worse than getting a bunch of [early-stage unproven therapies] on the market,” said Zuckerman. She added that those products could be dangerous and make people sick, all the while enriching vendors who develop or sell them.

“Getting things on the market quickly means that everybody becomes a guinea pig,” said Zuckerman. “That’s not the way those of us who care about healthcare think.”

The consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen puts their view in more blunt terms, saying O’Neill is “One of Trump’s worst picks.” Public Citizen also described O’Neill as “unfit to be the #2 US healthcare leader.”

Moreover, the Public Citizen group criticizes O’Neill’s libertarian views—which advocate for minimal government intervention in the free market and private lives of citizens. The group’s co-president says O’Neill’s libertarian views run “antithetical to basic public health.”

A Longevity Enthusiast

O’Neill will oversee several agencies while serving as the deputy secretary of HHS. Such agencies include the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which provides the world’s biggest source of funding for biomedical research; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the US’s biggest health agency; and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), created to ensure that drugs and other therapies are safe and effective.

“It can be a quite powerful position,” said Patricia Zettler, a legal scholar from Ohio State University who specializes in matters related to the FDA.

Serving as deputy secretary is the most senior role O’Neill has held at HHS, though he has held other positions with this department. As such, he held various other positions with HHS over five years in the early 2000s. Furthermore, things that O’Neill did after his stint with the HHS in the early 2000s helped him gain a reputation as an ally to those in the longevity field.

As an example, O’Neill appears to have had a close relationship with American entrepreneur Peter Thiel since the late 2000s. Thiel has invested heavily in longevity research and has said he does not believe death is inevitable.

From 2009 to 2012, O’Neill also served as CEO of the Thiel Foundation and co-founded the Thiel Fellowship, which offers $200,000 to up-and-coming young people who drop out of college and pursue other work. O’Neill also spent seven years as the managing director of Mithril Capital Management, which Thiel founded and which specializes in long-term venture capital funds. O’Neill became further ingrained in the longevity field when he spent more than 10 years representing Thiel’s interests as a board member of the SENS Research Foundation (SRF), an organization aiming to find treatments for aging.

Moreover, O’Neill spent a few years between 2019 and 2021 as the CEO of SRF, when its founder, Aubrey de Grey, a key figure in the longevity field, lost the CEO position following accusations of sexual harassment. Corroborating the notion that O’Neill is an ally to longevity enthusiasts, in 2020, on behalf of the SRF, O’Neill wrote Eric Hargan, then the deputy director of the HHS, regarding aging.

“More and more influential people consider aging an absurdity,” wrote O’Neill to Hargan. “Now we need to make it one.”

While Aubrey de Grey calls O’Neill “the devil incarnate,” likely because he believes O’Neill “incited” two women to allege that de Grey sexually harassed them, many other professionals in the longevity field have more positive opinions of O’Neill, according to MIT Technology Review.

The Longevity Science Field

The longevity science field is no stranger to controversy, owing, in large part, to grandiose promises of immortality and the marketing of pills, intravenous injections, and other longevity intervention procedures not backed by evidence. However, the longevity community includes many people along a spectrum of beliefs regarding aging—some with goals of adding a few years of healthy lifespan at one end and others seeking immortality at another. Furthermore, serious, high-profile doctors and scientists have been working diligently to propel the field into legitimacy.

Along those lines, many members of the longevity community have hope that O’Neill will put longevity research in the spotlight and further their agenda against aging now that he is confirmed with the HHS. Accordingly, these people hope O’Neill will use his position to give aging research more publicity and increase funding for their projects to drive the development of new drugs that might slow or even reverse human aging. If O’Neill does in fact push this pro-longevity agenda, he could set a goal of extending the lifespans of Americans.

Eric Verdin, president of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in California, has said that O’Neill has “been at the Buck several times.” He has also called O’Neill a “good guy” who is serious and understands the science of aging.

“He’s certainly someone who is going to help us really bring the longevity field to the front of the priorities of this administration,” said Verdin of O’Neill.

Moreover, Joe Betts-LaCroix, CEO of the longevity biotech company Retro Biosciences, has said he has known O’Neill for about 10 years. He also described O’Neill as “smart and clear thinking.”

“He’s been definitely interested in wanting us as a society to make progress on age-related diseases,” said Betts-LaCroix of O’Neill.

Adding support to the notion that O’Neill will push the pro-longevity agenda, after O’Neill’s confirmation, the A4LI LinkedIn account posted a photo of Livingston, its CEO, with O’Neill. “We look forward to working with him to elevate aging research as a national priority and to modernize regulatory pathways that support the development of longevity medicines,” read A4LI’s LinkedIn post.

Is This a Defining Moment for Longevity Research in the US?

Some libertarians, including some in the longevity community, believe the time is now for an upsurge of longevity research in the US. Not only do they expect O’Neill to back longevity science, but they also believe President Trump will advocate for new geographical economic zones, perhaps dedicated to longevity research. Such economic zones, which might mimic what is being done in Próspera, Honduras, could allow residents to set their own rules for governance and allow access to experimental aging intervention therapies that have not received FDA approval.

Along those lines, while campaigning for the presidency in 2023, Trump brought up a similar idea, saying, “We should hold a contest to charter up to 10 new cities and award them to the best proposals for development.”

Although the purpose of these proposed cities was vague, Donald Trump went on to say, “These freedom cities will reopen the frontier, reignite the American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people—all hardworking families—a new shot at homeownership and in fact the American dream.”

All the same, given how frequently Trump seems to change his mind, it remains hard to tell what the president and others in the administration will support on this issue.

Even with all of the longevity community’s clamour and enthusiasm for O’Neill taking, in part, the helm at the HHS, serious funding cuts have taken a toll on the NIH’s research endeavors. This makes matters murky, since some of the funding cuts have already affected research from aging scientists, such as Harvard’s David Sinclair. These funding cuts suggest that this day and age’s political climate may not be ideal for a longevity research renaissance of sorts.

Only time will tell whether Jim O’Neill’s position as the right-hand man of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will trigger an upsurge in longevity research developments and therapies. While no one knows for certain how much influence O’Neill will have, having a longevity enthusiast in such a high-ranking position cannot hurt in pushing longevity science’s agenda to extend human lifespan.