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[Shiggy]

More than anything, Peter Thiel, the billionaire technology investor and Donald Trump supporter, wants to find a way to escape death.

He's channeled millions of dollars into startups working on anti-aging medicine, spends considerable time and money researching therapies for his personal use and believes society ought to open its mind toward life-extension methods that sound weird or unsavory.

Speaking of weird and unsavoury, if there's one thing that really excites Thiel, it's the prospect of having younger people's blood transfused into his own veins.

That practice is known as parabiosis, and, according to Thiel, it's a potential biological Fountain of Youth--the closest thing science has discovered to an anti-aging panacea. Research into parabiosis began in the 1950s with crude experiments that involved cutting rats open and stitching their circulatory systems together. After decades languishing on the fringes, it's recently started getting attention from mainstream researchers, with multiple clinical trials underway in humans in the U.S. and even more advanced studies in China and Korea.

There are widespread rumors in Silicon Valley, where life-extension science is a popular obsession, that various wealthy individuals from the tech world have already begun practicing parabiosis, spending tens of thousands of dollars for the procedures and young-person-blood, and repeating the exercise several times a year. In our April 2015 interview, Thiel was seemingly explicit that parabiosis was something he hadn't "quite, quite, quite started yet." A Thiel Capital spokesman said nothing had changed since then.

Anyone seeking to practice parabiosis privately would quickly encounter the question of where to obtain sufficient quantities of young people's blood. But human blood isn't available for purchase to just anybody.

A spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration says the agency "regulates the collection and manufacture of blood and blood components to help protect the health of the blood donor and to ensure the safety, purity and potency of the blood product." While it's not approved specifically for anti-aging treatments, like other drugs, it can be prescribed for so-called off-label uses as long as there is no advertising or efficacy claims involved.

Clinical trials like Ambrosia's can get blood from blood banks fairly easily for that purpose, but Ambrosia is a for-profit company. For it to begin selling transfusions as a service to patient clients like Thiel, it would presumably need to figure out a source other than non-profit blood banks.

Karmazin acknowledges the potential supply issue, but notes that plasma is relatively abundant and has a two-year shelf life. He speculates that a surge of popular attention for parabiosis might inspire more blood donations by young donors, whose blood tends to provide greater benefit when administered in more conventional therapeutic transfusions.

For Thiel, the day when technologies like parabiosis are not only clinically proven but socially accepted can't come soon enough.

After all, he's not getting any younger.

http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-interested-in-young-blood-2016-8?IR=T


Not quite sure if such developments are really worth it. The issue is not gonna help when there are already too many humans on this planet. Death is natural, so is ageing. With already not enough blood on blood banks, wasting blood for the rich is rather cynical.

 

[whitemex88]

Would it be irony if he just died in some freak accident?

 

[Busty]

..., and yet he still cannot get it up.

Oh the humanity.

Would it be irony if he just died in some freak accident?

Run over by a blood truck driven by a 22 yo.

Or killed in a shoot out between the Bloods and the Crips.

 

[joe2187]

Elizabeth Báthory did it first...

 

[Hasphat'sAnts]

Vampirism is so hot right now

 

[Volimar]

According to head researcher, Dr. Elizabeth Bathory, young virgin blood is ideal for prolonging life.

Spoiler

soon

 

[afternoon delight]

With already not enough blood on blood banks, wasting blood for the rich is rather cynical.

The entire obsession of the ultra-wealthy with anti-aging techniques is rather uh, hilariously myopic, pitiful, laughable, worthy of jest, etc.

Jokes on them obviously- the epitome of grasping at straws.

 

[Jarmel]

Real life vampires, only they don't sparkle.

 

[harSon]

I thought it was the blood of Gawker that kept him youthful

 

[Guevara]

No big deal, he's been a metaphorical vampire for years.

 

[kami_sama]

I don't know, jokes aside, anti-aging medicine is the next frontier.
Even if he's Thiel, I'm completely fine with anyone pouring money into that type of research.

 

[TimmmV]

This is basically the background story of Eldrich Palmer in the book/tv show called "The Strain"

Hopefully this is not a sign that it will come true

 

[DrArchon]

If you've got enough money to piss away on imitating Elizabeth Bathory, why not skip right to the part where you're soldering on robot parts and going full Human Revolution?

 

[Ivan A Nguyen]

Who would participate in this non piratical research? It could never apply universally or else the population would be come a problem. Then it only becomes an application for the very rich. In that case, who wants their life's work to only be available to such a small portion of society?

 

[blame space]

Are you hungry?
Are you sick?
Are you begging for a break?

 

[Walter White Walker]

Well crap, that's not creepy at all.

 

[shoreu]

i'm -O and 20 im your guy!

 

[Lucumo]

A Trump supporter you say...

Spoiler

Finally the youth will start being useful.

 

[Crayons]

literally dystopian

 

[Beer Monkey]

Vampires for Trump?

Seems legit.

 

[sans_pants]

Who would participate in this non piratical research? It could never apply universally or else the population would be come a problem. Then it only becomes an application for the very rich. In that case, who wants their life's work to only be available to such a small portion of society?

You don't think we could adjust to longer life spans? You know the places where this would come first(1st world) are already slowing their birthrate

 

[commedieu]

Yet people will continue the both sides trope.

 

[Drazgul]

I'd totally be up for that, blood for the blood god.

 

[Orbis Tabula]

Interesting. Hopefully more and more people keep investing into anti-aging. Please please please, I don't wanna die. Then maybe if the blood thing works, scientists can just invent better, artificial blood.

 

[dave is ok]

Yet people will continue the both sides trope.

I don't think this has as much to do with Republican/Democrat as it does with the super wealthy/everyone else

 

[DarkKyo]

I need to find a way to extract and preserve my own blood. I'm 29 now, and I know I'll be wanting 29 year-old me's blood when I'm approaching my 50's/60's...

 

[ClosingADoor]

If the ultra-rich are getting eternal life, maybe they'll finally put some effort in stopping climate change, since it will effect them in their lifetimes now.

 

[VAD]

If the ultra-rich are getting eternal life, maybe they'll finally put some effort in stopping climate change, since it will effect them in their lifetimes now.

Nah, they will spend even more money to find a way to live without breathing

 

[BosSin]

I don't know, jokes aside, anti-aging medicine is the next frontier.
Even if he's Thiel, I'm completely fine with anyone pouring money into that type of research.

Why? This will only benefit the mega-rich, and if it does somehow trickle down, will only cause bigger problems to over population.

If they're gonna waste money on something as pointless as this they might as well pour into something more helpful. Like building a new major world city that is initially open for migration, that's about as lofty as this dream.

 

[Merino]

Sounds earily similar to the plot of Jupiter Ascending

 

[DeathoftheEndless]

This crosses the line between everyday villainy and cartoonish super-villainy.

 

[sans_pants]

Why? This will only benefit the mega-rich, and if it does somehow trickle down, will only cause bigger problems to over population.

If they're gonna waste money on something as pointless as this they might as well pour into something more helpful. Like building a new major world city that is initially open for migration, that's about as lofty as this dream.

How is a city more helpful than extending youth?

 

[ThisGuy]

Can we create blood in a lab?

 

[Orbis Tabula]

Woah, guys. Why is everyone freaking out? He's not trying to steal the blood. If it weirds you out, you don't have to donate any of your precious bodily fluids.

 

[geestack]

is peter thiel's name actually peter weyland?!

 

[BriGuy]

Interesting. Hopefully more and more people keep investing into anti-aging. Please please please, I don't wanna die. Then maybe if the blood thing works, scientists can just invent better, artificial blood.

Spoiler alert - you're going to die.

Even if some anti-aging breakthrough were to come to pass in our lifetimes, it would almost exclusively end up in the hands of the ultra wealthy. Just look at how much damage some of them can inflict over one lifetime, then imagine what happens when their influence extends in perpetuity. Us common folk would be reduced to their vassals (or worse) within a couple of generations.

 

[DarkKyo]

Why? This will only benefit the mega-rich, and if it does somehow trickle down, will only cause bigger problems to over population.

Overpopulation will force us to find solutions to the big, long-term problems that humans face.

There will be more people, living longer, to work faster on projects that push humanity forward. We could create monolithic mega-cities and housing structuresthat are self sufficient, grow their own food, and can house millions of people. Alternatively we could set our sights on space -- building bases and eventually cities on the moon and Mars.

This is the big picture. This is our future and our true purpose. I can't stand when people cry about overpopulation when it comes to anti-aging therapies being administered to the general public because that shit(overpopulation) is going to happen anyways barring something like an extinction-level event or a massive pandemic/plague, so why not utilize the sheer amount of people living longer to boost human civilization forward at an exponential rate?

Eventually we are going to create hyper-intelligent AI that will either solve all our problems or annihilate us in one go, so what real difference will overpopulation make anyways?

 

[BosSin]

How is a city more helpful than extending youth?

I'm talking about a city on the levels of new york, san fran, london, paris etc. Somewhere that will promise an ass load of opportunities in an ideal environment where everyone will want to move to. Plus it would be dirt cheap to live there initially. This would help deal with migration problems for a short period of time

 

[sans_pants]

I'm talking about a city on the levels of new york, san fran, london, paris etc. Somewhere that will promise an ass load of opportunities in an ideal environment where everyone will want to move to. Plus it would be dirt cheap to live there initially. This would help deal with migration problems for a short period of time

Bro your plan is people spend a bunch of money to give away housing in some sort of megacity and we just throw all the immigrants there?

 

[Acorn]

Spoiler alert - you're going to die.

Even if some anti-aging breakthrough were to come to pass in our lifetimes, it would almost exclusively end up in the hands of the ultra wealthy. Just look at how much damage some of them can inflict over one lifetime, then imagine what happens when their influence extends in perpetuity. Us common folk would be reduced to their vassals (or worse) within a couple of generations.

Rupert Murdoch has already found immortality. I'll die before him.

 

[kswiston]

Bro your plan is people spend a bunch of money to give away housing in some sort of megacity and we just throw all the immigrants there?

Worked in Judge Dredd!

 

[Kayhan]

He just wants more life, fucker.

 

[ant_]

This is a good plot for a movie. The elite class is essentially immortal while we regular people die normally.

 

[Squirrel Killer]

Yet people will continue the both sides trope.

Seems more like the "demonize the other side" trope.

 

[Foffy]

If the ultra-rich are getting eternal life, maybe they'll finally put some effort in stopping climate change, since it will effect them in their lifetimes now.

Nah, climate change should be the reminder that eternal life as fixed organisms is itself a fallacy. Nature is impermanence, and inferring otherwise is a disastrous failure of perception.

We can fix the climate, but the sun will die. Make another sun? Keep playing whack-a-mole with life? It's life of the gaps, in a sense.

It's one thing to try and improve stability of life. It's another thing altogether to assume you can keep it fixed. Nothing in this cosmos is fixed, and the human error here is even the momentary perception of it being otherwise.

 

[Ether_Snake]

I had this idea for a scifi novel where rich people try to amass huge sums of money to get frozen up when they reach a certain age and then the fund simply pays the costs of keeping them frozen for as long as possible until science has reached a point where they can be unfrozen and be immortal, whatever the means may be by then. Since no one knows how long it would take to get there, they keep trying to make more and more money, it's never enough; the more you have accumulated, the higher the chances are that you'll be kept frozen for long enough by the company that handles it.

Then the story gets weird as the company becomes a sort of cult status for the rich, and it becomes full of parallels to religious myths. The unfrozen rich people would presumably awaken in a world where they would be immortal and have access to their wealth, of which the excess not used by the company would have accumulated. The company becomes the gate-keepers to paradise.

So you have rich people literally pilling wealth to keep it "in the afterlife". It gets all psedo-masonic-satanic-egyptian. Maybe it turns out to be a scam and the CEO just spends it all, or eventually people find out but by then society sees the rich people of the past as monsters and to punish them they by bringing them back to life by putting their brains in bodies that can be tortured and regenerated forever, effectively condemning them to hell.

But I suck at writing so whatever.

 

[Iksenpets]

I'm not sure if I would find Peter Thiel believable if he were a fictional character. Between the seasteading and the vampirism, the personal war against a media company for reporting on his sex life that somehow grew to involve a professional wrestler and the support for a petty demagogue in some bizarre attempt to collapse the democratic order so that he can rebuild the world as his own libertarian utopia, his fund to pay kids not to go to college, it's all so crazy.

 

[Luschient]

Are you hungry?
Are you sick?
Are you begging for a break?

Lol, perfect.

 

[DarkKyo]

Nah, climate change should be the reminder that eternal life as fixed organisms is itself a fallacy. Nature is impermanence, and inferring otherwise is a disastrous failure of perception.

We can fix the climate, but the sun will die. Make another sun? Keep playing whack-a-mole with life? It's life of the gaps, in a sense.

I don't think anyone who wants some form of quasi-immortality or even basic life extension truly believes that anything lasts forever -- yes, even the life-bearing characteristics of the universe will eventually fade away... the quest for youth, a longer life, and anti-aging therapies in general are merely a way of revolting against the ridiculously short lifespans we are born into. If you live long enough you will eventually grow weary of the struggle to continue existing so you'll begin to view death not so much as an inescapable, terrifying fate.. but more so a well-deserved rest.

Being dissatisfied with the lot we humans are given is completely natural given the freak evolutionary emergence of consciousness. We are elevated minds trapped in the bodies of animals. Dreaming lights afloat in a sea of cold and darkness. To be satisfied with a scant 70 years of life(with at least 30+ of those years sucking due to our bodies slowing down) is a ridiculous ideal to hold yourself to. If we could each get a couple hundred more years in this universe I don't think we would be so terrified of the infinite nothing at the end because it would truly feel like stepping into a new experience as opposed to feeling like the end of everything.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

A Trump supporter you say...

Spoiler

Finally the youth will start being useful.

Came here for this.