A quiet but revolutionary new national health policy goes into effect this week, ushering in changes that could lead to important medical discoveries that benefit most Americans. There’s just one problem. Implementing the change will require that our country’s health researchers make some fundamental changes in how they do business.

Under the National Institutes of Health’s new Inclusion Across the Lifespan policy, federally supported medical research must include patients of all relevant ages or explain their exclusion. Since most studies already include adults, and a mandate to include children has existed since 1998, the novelty in this policy is the stipulation that clinical research include people age 65 and older.
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That’s a big group. It currently includes both Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Clarence Thomas, as well as the 50 million other older Americans, along with the rest of us who get lucky enough down the road to make it into elderhood.
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