How a (maybe) Lincoln quote explains a $60 billion industry built on hope, hype, and very expensive pee

There’s a quote often attributed to Abraham Lincoln that goes something like this: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Here’s the delicious irony: there’s no documentary evidence Lincoln ever said it. The earliest attribution appeared in 1887, twenty-two years after Lincoln’s death , when a Prohibitionist politician invoked it to criticize his opponents. Before that? Nothing. Historians have given the attribution a grade of “D.”

In other words, people have been fooled into believing a quote about fooling people was said by someone who probably never said it.

Which brings us, inevitably, to the longevity supplement industry.

The Market That Hope Built

The anti-aging and longevity supplement market has become a juggernaut. Industry analysts value it at approximately $4.88 billion in 2025, with projections reaching nearly $10 billion by 2034. The broader longevity and anti-aging drug market is even more staggering, valued at $18.6 billion in 2023 and projected to hit $77.7 billion by 2030.

That’s a lot of money chasing a simple question: Can we pill our way to immortality?

The short answer, according to the peer-reviewed science, is: We don’t know yet, and probably not.

The longer answer involves yeast, confused mice, and a Harvard professor whose supplement empire came crashing down in spectacular fashion.

The Resveratrol Saga: When Mice Ate Better Than You

Let’s start with resveratrol, the darling of the anti-aging world. You may remember it as “the red wine molecule, ” the reason your aunt insists her nightly Merlot is a health regimen.

In 2006, Dr. David Sinclair’s lab at Harvard published research suggesting resveratrol could extend lifespan in mice. The media went berserk. Wine sales probably ticked up. GlaxoSmithKline bought Sinclair’s company for $720 million.

Then reality intervened.

Critical analysis revealed that resveratrol only helped mice fed an extremely unbalanced diet consisting of 60 percent fat. The mice developed severe obesity, inflammation, liver damage, and insulin resistance. Under normal conditions? Nothing.

The National Institute on Aging’s Interventional Testing Program (ITP), the gold standard for longevity research, tested resveratrol rigorously. All ITP studies clearly showed that resveratrol had no effect on lifespan in male or female mice, whether started young or later in life.

A meta-analysis published in Biology Letters examined resveratrol’s effects across species and concluded: “Few species conclusively show life extension in response to resveratrol. As such, we question the practice of the substance being marketed as a life-extending health supplement for humans.”

And here’s the kicker: there is no direct evidence that resveratrol extends lifespan in humans. None. Zero. The clinical trials that have been conducted? The outcomes were disappointing. The trials demonstrated neutral or insignificant results in terms of measurable health benefits or lifespan extension.

Yet walk into any supplement store, and there it sits, promising you the secrets of the French paradox in convenient capsule form.

NMN: The New Hope (With Old Problems)

I’ve written about this before. If resveratrol is yesterday’s darling, NMN (nicotinamide mononucleotide) is today’s. It’s a precursor to NAD+, a molecule essential for cellular energy that declines with age. The theory is elegant: boost NAD+, reverse aging.

The reality is more complicated.

A comprehensive review in Advances in Nutrition examined the state of NMN research and found that while early human clinical trials suggest NMN is generally safe, “clear evidence for antiaging effects of NMN on the human body is still scarce.”

The review continued with a reality check: “Longer, larger and better-designed human trials are needed to investigate NMN administration’s safe dosage, tolerance and frequency. Humans usually take supplements for a long time and sometimes for most of their lifespan. Thus, the long-term safety issue should be addressed.”

Translation: We don’t know if it works, and we don’t know if it’s safe to take for decades.

And that’s the best evidence we have.

The Regulatory Wild West

Here’s where things get truly absurd. Unlike pharmaceuticals, the FDA does not approve dietary supplements or their product labeling before they are sold to the public. In fact, most products can be lawfully brought to market without FDA even knowing.

Let that sink in. You can launch a supplement claiming to help with “cellular rejuvenation” tomorrow, and as long as you include the magic disclaimer — “These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA” — you’re in business.

Criteria for the rigor of evidence needed to support a claim have not been established; scientific evidence may be provided by just one article that has not achieved recognition or agreement.

One article. That’s it. No replication. No peer consensus. Just one study, possibly conducted by the company selling the product, possibly on fifteen undergraduate students over three weeks.

A study found that 55% of websites selling supplements made disease claims; half of these websites did not contain the required disclaimer. Even higher rates of disease claims were found in non-English advertisements.

The Journal of Ethics at the American Medical Association puts it bluntly: “While there is relatively robust evidence to support use of some supplements (e.g., folic acid in early pregnancy), the evidence is minimal or even nonexistent for many products.”

The Translation Problem

Here’s something the longevity industry doesn’t advertise: more than 90 percent of molecules that show positive effects in preclinical studies fail to produce results in human clinical trials.

What works in yeast doesn’t necessarily work in mice. What works in mice doesn’t necessarily work in humans. Evolution has been tinkering with our metabolic pathways for millions of years, and the differences between a nematode worm and your Aunt Carol are… substantial.

A major PMC review on dietary supplements and aging acknowledged this directly: “There is only limited evidence to demonstrate overall health benefits of using such substances so far. Findings from epidemiological studies reporting the long-term health impacts of these agents are rather inconsistent.”

Or as another paper in Frontiers in Aging summarized: “Overall, our review suggests that dietary/natural products increase healthspan — rather than lifespan — effectively minimizing the period of frailty at the end of life.”

That’s actually meaningful! Feeling better as you age is valuable. But it’s not the same as reversing aging or living to 150, which is what the marketing implies.

The Sinclair Problem

No discussion of longevity supplements would be complete without returning to Dr. David Sinclair, who has become the industry’s most prominent evangelist. He takes NMN and resveratrol daily. He’s published extensively on sirtuins and aging.

He’s also faced serious questions about his track record.

GlaxoSmithKline’s $720 million acquisition of his company ended with shuttered offices and discontinued clinical trials. A leading resveratrol researcher was found guilty of 145 counts of fabrication and falsification of data, throwing the whole field into turmoil. (That wasn’t Sinclair, but it was in his research orbit.)

The meta-analysis on resveratrol and longevity came with a particularly pointed observation from researchers quoted in interviews: “People are very easily fooled. It’s easy to find eight or ten things that people believe because they read them on the internet or saw them on TV, and they’re convinced, but people are very, very gullible.”

What Actually Works?

After wading through the science, some things do emerge with consistent support , they’re just not very sexy:

Caloric restriction remains the most reliable and effective means of promoting longer lifespans in animal studies. It works across species. It’s well-documented. It’s also extremely difficult to maintain and not particularly fun.

Exercise, sleep, and diet are mentioned in virtually every serious longevity paper as foundational interventions that actually have robust evidence.

Certain supplements for specific deficiencies are genuinely useful, vitamin D if you’re deficient, folic acid during pregnancy, omega-3s for certain populations and if you’re the right phenotype. (There four phenotypes and one raises your cholesterol with fish oil.)

But the anti-aging pill that reverses cellular damage while you sleep? The supplement industry isn’t as strictly regulated as pharmaceuticals, and “just because something is natural doesn’t always mean it’s risk-free.”

The Honest Disclaimer

Look, I’m not saying all longevity research is bunk. Some companies are conducting rigorous clinical trials, 25 registered human trials and over 80 global patents. Science is advancing. NAD+ precursors may yet prove beneficial.

But here’s what the evidence actually shows:

1. Most longevity supplements have limited or no human evidence for their primary claims.

2. Animal studies frequently fail to translate to humans.

3. The regulatory framework allows companies to sell hope with minimal proof.

4. The industry makes billions while the science catches up (or doesn’t).

Circling Back to Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln probably never said you can fool some of the people all of the time. The quote first appeared in 1887, used by a Prohibitionist politician, and within two years, it was already being used in advertisements for everything from clothing stores to root beer.

The longevity industry has learned the same lesson those advertisers discovered over a century ago: if you wrap your product in the language of science and hope, people will buy it.

Can you fool all the people all the time? No. But you can make several billion dollars fooling some of them some of the time, which, for the supplement industry, is apparently enough.

The mice, at least, are unimpressed.

Note: This article is not medical advice. If you’re considering longevity supplements, talk to your doctor, preferably one who has read the actual studies.