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IPFS News Link • Science, Medicine and Technology

Why Peter Thiel Believes Young People's Blood Is the Ultimate Medicine

• http://www.inc.com

"Vampires are now very real, but we never expected them to be our grandparents. A new technology is developed that allows the old to heal themselves with the blood of the young. This creates a problem with supply and demand of children's plasma. The seniors demand new laws forcing kids to donate their young blood, which causes a generational war."  https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-Blood-Dystopian-ebook/dp/B009SAMFEC#navbar
 

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.

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.

Considering the science-fiction promise of parabiosis, the studies have received notably little fanfare. But Thiel has been watching closely.

Thiel and Ambrosia.

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 aging. 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.