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<\/p>\nIt might sound like science fiction but the latest Silicon Valley buzzword is immortality. Experts estimate the business of defying death, cheating the Grim Reaper if you like, will be worth a staggering \u00a3486billion by 2025 and many artificial intelligence (AI) start-ups have an interest in the issue.<\/p>\n
But this is not simply exercise, diet and a bit of botox. According to technology reporter and psychologist Aleks Krotoski, there is a growing group of people who are prepared to spend huge sums in their quest to live forever.<\/p>\n
Through an extreme lifestyle of calorie-controlled dieting, injections, intense exercise and around-the-clock medical tests, they have cultivated zero-fat bodies, glossy skin, and demeanours that make them seem slightly unreal.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone who is hyper into longevity looks this same way,\u201d explains Krotoski, presenter of the new BBC Radio 4 podcast, The Immortals, which meets the people attempting to defy death. “The uncanniness isn’t just their stillness, it’s that you can’t immediately identify their age.”<\/p>\n
Eternal life is big business in California\u2019s Silicon Valley, the home of Apple, Facebook, eBay, and Google among others. It\u2019s part of a wider movement of \u201clife extensionists\u201d who are pushing the boundaries of science and technology to give people another decade free of illness. At the conservative end are the scientists.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re seeking to address age-related diseases, or ageing in general, and to give us extra healthy life so we live and we’re happy \u2013 and then we drop dead,\u201d Krotoski summarises. And there is optimism among researchers worldwide that this goal will happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a sort of space race happening where you have different countries that are trying to accelerate regulation to get funding and acceptance for this research,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe race is headed by the US and Saudi Arabia. People have suggested that the reason so much money is flowing from Saudi Arabia is because it’s a small family of extremely wealthy people who want to stay in power forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
She laughs. \u201cThat might be a reason but you could argue it\u2019s possibly the same with people in Silicon Valley who enjoy their magical wizard status.\u201d<\/p>\n
And it is that group of Californian venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and so-called disruptors who make up the immoralists. Frustrated by the wider scientific community\u2019s refusal to search for a silver single bullet, they\u2019ve turned to technology using their own deep pockets to fund it.<\/p>\n
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\u201cSilicon Valley has always been a place where people have these giant dreams and this can-do attitude that, \u2018We\u2019re going to solve a problem\u2019 \u2013 this is the next problem that they’re solving,\u201d explains Krotoski.<\/p>\n
Her interviewees include Bryan Johnson, 46, arguably the most famous proponent of eternal life on the planet right now. The tech titan, who is pale and taut and hovers between five and six per cent body fat, is attempting to lower his biological age to 17 to buy him enough time until an elixir of life is invented.<\/p>\n
He has entrusted his life to a team of 30 doctors and a scientific algorithm that aims to rewind time through a series of experimental treatments.<\/p>\n
Every day, he swallows more than 100 pills and consumes his vegan diet by 11am. In between vigorous bouts of exercise and laser treatments, he has endless medical tests and skin treatments.<\/p>\n
And for two hours before bed, he wears glasses that block out harsh blue light. It sounds tortuous and dull but it appears to be working: Johnson\u2019s heart age is 37, his skin is that of a 27-year-old and he has the lung capacity of an 18-year-old. The results of his data are published online.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s just trying to crack a puzzle and he’s decided that this is the way he’s going to do it,\u201d says Krotoski.<\/p>\n
She describes Johnson as a \u201csuper obsessed, hyper-focused geek\u201d at heart, but his ideas have courted controversy. Most recently, he announced he had started shock therapy on his manhood, while earlier this year, it was revealed he had been injecting his 17-year-old son\u2019s blood plasma into his body.<\/p>\n
The latter treatment is, at least, rooted in science: ground-breaking medical trials in 2005 by professors at the University of California, Berkeley, revealed how the tissue of younger mice could be rejuvenated after receiving the blood of their younger counterparts.<\/p>\n
However, Johnson has since ditched the blood transfusions, after accusations of vampirism, telling social media he had derived \u201cno benefits\u201d from it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s using himself as a human guinea pig\u2026 the plasma doesn’t change anything,\u201d says Krotoski. \u201cIf anything doesn’t go in the right direction, he gets rid of it. He\u2019s a scientific baseline for himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another doctor, Jesse Karmazin, became the first person to inject blood from young bodies into older patients in 2016. He created a blood transfusion clinic, called Ambrosia, and charged patients \u00a36,200 to have 2.5 litres of plasma donated from 16 to 25-year-olds injected into their veins.<\/p>\n
Three years later, he was forced to shut the business after the US Food And Drug Administration issued a warning saying blood plasma treatments had \u201cno proven clinical benefit\u201d and may carry \u201crisks\u201d of injury or disease.<\/p>\n
The problem, as Krotoski states in her podcast, is that once the genie is out of the bottle, it\u2019s impossible to control where it\u2019s taken next. Which is why, she explains, greater regulation is desperately needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlind, large-scale studies are really important to know whether [treatments like young blood plasma infusions] work or not rather than trying to emulate a person doing an extreme thing who admits to it himself,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
She originally planned to write her series solely around Karmazin, who was funded by Silicon Valley, until her investigations found the camp of age-defying extremists existed in far greater numbers than she had imagined.<\/p>\n
How many are we talking about? \u201cThousands,\u201d she replies.<\/p>\n
Among them are advocates of transhumanism. The philosophical movement seeks to evolve the human race by fusing our bodies with technology to augment our capabilities and overcome our biological limitations.<\/p>\n
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Think cryogenics, computer chips implanted in brains and terrifyingly, a world one day where man is merged with machine \u2013 money is already being invested in so-called \u201cposthumanism\u201d. \u201cThese individuals think technology will save us,\u201d says Krotoski. \u201cThey think we will live forever as digital versions of ourselves on Mars inside computer server farms.\u201d<\/p>\n
It sounds like the dystopian scene from The Matrix film where Keanu Reeves\u2019 hero Neo discovers that intelligent machines rule the world and grow enslaved humans in pods. In fact, Krotoksi believes transhumanism crosses over with religious fundamentalism if not simply Hollywood.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the people who have fallen into this moralist mindset have left a traditional religion and in transhumanism have found a secular religion,\u201d she explains. \u201cSome of the immortalists I\u2019ve seen speaking at conferences are Messianic. They say, \u2018I will bring you immortality, we will have immortality.\u2019 I remember the first time I heard that and I thought, God, this sounds like church. It sounds like a fundamentalist belief. Follow what I’m doing and I will take you to the promised land.\u201d<\/p>\n
Is it also the case that far too many people fear ageing, and ultimately death? Krotoski believes so but she also links the motivation to a move away from traditional religion in the West. \u201cPeople are putting their faith into science and technology as a kind of replacement for a god in the sky,\u201d she says. \u201cA belief that rational science and technology will take us to the next level of humanity. It is both the fear of death and the need to believe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Life extensionism hasn\u2019t been pursued with vigour in Hindu countries, where ideas of reincarnation proliferate, nor in religion where nirvana is the goal, suggesting culture can shape the conversation. As for immortality, Krotoski remains 99 per cent sceptical that it will happen.<\/p>\n
She attributes her one percent of uncertainty to the accelerating rate of technology that could one day be beyond today\u2019s realms of possibility.<\/p>\n
Even in that scenario, our bodies won\u2019t be the carriers of our brains.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur skin will turn to mush, we’re not physically built to last,\u201d says Krotoski. \u201cWe have a sell-by date I’m sorry to say.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Meanwhile, money continues to pour into the burgeoning life-extension industry. Pay-Pal co-founder Peter Thiel has heavily invested in The Methuselah Foundation, a non-profit medical charity with aims to \u201cmaking 90 the new 50 by 2030\u201d.<\/p>\n
In March, it was revealed Sam Altman, the CEO who pioneered the AI-powered system ChatGPT, had invested \u00a3142 million in the start-up Retro Biosciences, whose mission \u201cis to add 10 years to healthy human lifespan\u201d through cell regenerative therapies. But even both men\u2019s contribution is minuscule compared with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. He has reportedly invested \u00a32.4billion into anti-ageing company Altos Labs.<\/p>\n
But is the obvious question in all of this: Do people really want to live forever?<\/p>\n
It may be fine for billionaires who lead fulfilling lives and enjoy lavish lifestyles. But what about the millions of people who work long hours in dead-end jobs with little money saved for retirement? And don\u2019t even get started on wars, chaotic climate change and political instability.<\/p>\n
Krotoski nods her head enthusiastically.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, not everybody wants to live forever and also not everybody is prepared for an extra 20 years of healthy life either. It will mess with our society.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s talking about our creaking infrastructure, homes, health systems, and pension funds that could fall off the precipice in the event of longer human life.<\/p>\n
Krotoski is nearly 49. Has making this podcast made her covet immortality?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s made me feel better about living as long as I’m willing to live, which is contradictory to what you would imagine,\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have old injuries coming back to bug me but that\u2019s cool. Maybe I\u2019ll feel differently when I get older and death gets closer. But in some ways, this series has made me feel more at peace with the finitude of mortality.\u201d<\/p>\n