What is it with Silicon Valley billionaires thinking their money can actually buy research that will help them live forever — or at least, indefinitely.
Ray Kurzweil — now a big Google executive — is a transhumanist who hopes to upload his mind into a computer.
Peter Thiel is of a similar mindset. He now thinks that being transfused with young people’s blood (or plasma) could prove a fountain of youth, a process called parabiosis. From the Inc. story:
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 to life-extension methods that sound weird or unsavory.
Speaking of weird and unsavory, if there’s one thing that really excites Thiel, it’s the prospect of having younger people’s blood transfused into his own veins.
Bella Lugosi, call your agent.
Apparently in animal studies there has been some sense that there could be a rejuvenating effect from the blood or plasma of the young.
But even if there is a possibility, our youth should not become so many blood banks for the rich afraid of growing old.
Besides, we have a blood shortage for people who really need it — those with injuries and who require surgery.
I mean good grief, the rich already buy other people’s eggs, organs on the black market, and rent wombs from desperate women. Now blood, and not for healing but trying not to grow old?
It may already be happening among the minions of the Silicon Valley biotech sector:
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.
And they called John D. Rockefeller a robber baron.
Peter Thiel Vants Young People's Blood!