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Apparently, Peter Thiel Is Very, Very Interested in Young People's Blood
According to the article, ...
More than anything, Peter Thiel, the billionaire technology investor and Donald Trump supporter, wants to find a way to escape death. ... if there's one thing that really excites Thiel, it's the prospect of having younger people's blood transfused into his own veins. ... according to Thiel, it's a potential biological Fountain of Youth - the closest thing science has discovered to an anti-ageing panacea.
[...] 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.
[...] In Monterey, California, about 120 miles from San Francisco, a company called Ambrosia recently commenced one of the trials. Titled "Young Donor Plasma Transfusion and Age-Related Biomarkers," it has a simple protocol: Healthy participants aged 35 and older get a transfusion of blood plasma from donors under 25, and researchers monitor their blood over the next two years for molecular indicators of health and ageing. The study is patient-funded; participants, who range in age from late 30s through 80s, must pay $8,000 to take part, and live in or travel to Monterey for treatments and follow-up assessments.
I thought I would bring this development to the attention of the Soylent News community. I also have a question. The article claims that the practice is known as parabiosis. But Wikipedia says "parabiosis is a class of techniques in which two living organisms are joined together surgically and develop single, shared physiological systems, such as a shared circulatory system." This definition seems to include the relevant 1950s rat experiments. But I believe it does not cover the Monterey experiment, nor the kinds of human treatment that Thiel and others are seeking. Am I right about this? And if so, is there better word to use?
Also, feel free to comment any fictional examples you know of. Did Montgomery Burns ever partake, for example?
[Continues...]
Want to stay/get younger? Inject plasma from a younger person...
Now a startup has launched a "clinical trial" to test the antiaging benefits of such treatment...but it's pay-per-view. Writing in Science today, Jocelyn Kaiser reports on the ethical, and other, aspects of this project. From her article, "Young blood antiaging trial raises questions":
[...] The company, Ambrosia in Monterey, California, plans to charge participants $8000 for lab tests and a one-time treatment with young plasma. The volunteers don't have to be sick or even particularly aged--the trial is open to anyone 35 and older. Karmazin notes that the study passed ethical review and argues that it's not that unusual to charge people to participate in clinical trials.
To some ethicists and researchers, however, the trial raises red flags, both for its cost to participants and for a design that they say is unlikely to deliver much science. "There's just no clinical evidence [that the treatment will be beneficial], and you're basically abusing people's trust and the public excitement around this," says neuroscientist Tony Wyss-Coray of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who led the 2014 young plasma study in mice. [In which injecting old mice with the plasma portion of blood from young mice seemed to improve the elderly rodents' memory and ability to learn.]
[...]
To bioethicist Leigh Turner at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, the study brings to mind a growing number of scientifically dubious trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov by private, for-profit stem cell clinics. The presence of such trials in the database confers "undeserved legitimacy," he says.
The scientific design of the trial is drawing concerns as well. "I don't see how it will be in any way informative or convincing," says aging biologist Matt Kaeberlein of the University of Washington, Seattle. The participants won't necessarily be elderly, making it hard to see any effects, and there are no well-accepted biomarkers of aging in blood, he says. "If you're interested in science," Wyss-Coray adds, why doesn't such a large trial include a placebo arm? Karmazin says he can't expect people to pay knowing they may get a placebo. With physiological measurements taken before and after treatment, each person will serve as their own control, he explains.
[Ed Note: The second sub was added about 15 minutes after the first story went live on the main page.]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday August 02 2016, @12:39PM
I find it funny when I read the same ignorant comments on the subject time and time again.
It's obvious that death due to aging is not an equal playing field (genetics and differing lifestyle factors play a role). It is also obvious that aging damage can be fixed and that aging can be reversed.
The rich billionaire is putting up an oversized amount of money to invest in basic research that may not even extend his life. Future generations will get far more benefit out of anti-aging research than Peter Thiel is likely to get.
Some of us believe that there is no afterlife. So unless we have lost the will to live and are ready to commit suicide, there is no reason to accept death, especially when the possibility of a youthful indefinite lifespan exists.
The research will get pursued whether or not you support the anti-aging angle. Want a cure for Alzheimer's? That's an anti-aging therapy since it involves clearing out accumulated cell junk.
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(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 02 2016, @01:33PM
Umm, no, it isn't. Rich people have been trying to do just that for a very very long time, and still have not come up with a single Lazarus Long. Experiments have been done to try to undo the deterioration of DNA, which seems to be the major cause of aging, but so far at least the effect of that is to create a lump of cancer.
What is absolutely true is that there are a lot of things you can do to reduce the effects. Keeping your mind and body active, intentional exercise, and a good diet will go a long way. For example, my grandmother takes full advantage of her nursing home's health programs, which is a big part of why she can travel around the world and walk around unassisted at age 90. But even so, there's deterioration going on, and she's not as mentally sharp as she used to be.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday August 02 2016, @01:40PM
I've already posted way too much in this thread. I'll let you choose whether you want to educate yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsNNUEx5OkU [youtube.com]
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(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 02 2016, @02:06PM
Your video, linked Wikipedia pages, etc are all pointing to the efforts of rich people to do research that could potentially unlock a method of anti-aging, through organizations like the Methuselah Foundation. However, they definitely don't have a solution in place right now, because if they did it would be getting splashed across the front pages of every newspaper in the country and every rich person on the planet would be beating a path to their doorstep. The best they have are some experimental ideas.
In short, anti-aging can't be all that effective, because if it were Donald Trump would look at least 20 years younger than he actually does.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday August 02 2016, @02:32PM
Some things worth doing aren't easy.
For one, I don't believe drug/protein/chemicals are the best way to achieve the SENS goals. Instead, I would prefer to see nanobots used. That's a technology in its infancy rather than an undiscovered drug. However, initial anti-aging therapies can be expected to be less effective, yet extend lifespans long enough for some people to live to see better generations of the therapies/technology.
Two, stuff like the story you are commenting on are gaining media attention. But like any health science story, there will be less attention paid during the research phase and much more when the therapies are ready for the general population. It should probably stay that way.
Three, no billionaire can skip years or decades of R&D. They can help speed it up by contributing their cash. While the therapies aren't "effective" (due to not existing, beyond a few trials like this one), the major areas of aging damage have been identified, which is a good step towards actually solving the problems.
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(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Tuesday August 02 2016, @01:44PM
[...]there is no reason to accept death, especially when the possibility of a youthful indefinite lifespan exists.
Denying our mortality is a perversion in those old enough that they should have learned better. Pin your hopes on technology and you will be bitterly disappointed.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday August 02 2016, @01:59PM
Linear thinking at its worst. Of course things will just remain the way they were in grandpa's time! Or like they were 1,000 years ago! Death due to aging is just a natural part of life! Just like frequent deaths due to childbirth! And cholera!
Aging is damage. Damage can be fixed. If you don't understand this, then you might as well oppose any funding for a cure for Alzheimer's.
Peter Thiel is 48. He will have less of a chance to escape "mortality" than a billionaire who is currently 38 years old. Or possibly a poor kid who is just 8 years old. He can't improve his chance at a 150 year+ lifespan as much as being born decades later would. But he can invest some of his money in basic research that improves health outcomes for everybody.
Indefinite lifespan != immortality. You could still die from a mass shooting, train derailment, meteor strike, supervolcano. I doubt you will have much time to be bitterly disappointed if the death is sudden.
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(Score: 2) by Gravis on Wednesday August 03 2016, @12:31PM
i have no problem with people investing anti-aging research. what i find funny is that young billionaires are never the ones that invest anti-aging research, it's only the billionaire that ignores the inevitability of death that then becomes obsessed with staying alive about half-way through their life.
that's the joke! you don't have to accept death because death is coming for you no matter how hard you fight it.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday August 03 2016, @12:51PM
And that's simply not true. I might last beyond the heat death of the universe, converted to some quantum energy form. Or destroy time and live in the current moment forever.
(Seriously though) We'll take it one milestone at a time. If you can live to 1,000 and 10,000 years old and access the technology available by then, you have a decent chance to make it to 10 billion years old. That's plenty of time to figure out if the expanding universe can be altered, reversed, halted. If you can achieve and commit to an equilibrium that allows you to live past 1 trillion, 1 octillion years, or whatever, with no intervention needed to replenish energy/resources or counteract the expanding universe, then you are essentially immortal. As for what to do with that time, mind wiping and inserting yourself into random simulations is one idea.
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