
Some wealthy people are injecting blood from teenagers to gain ‘immortality’ - edward
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/item/347828f8-6e7f-4a9b-92ab-95f637a9dc2e
======
dmix
TLDR: A test using mice doing a transfusion of blood from younger->older
showed signs of rejuvenation. It's still going through clinical trials for
humans. An SF startup is running such a trial with 100 people, each of whom
paid $8k.

\+ there are critics/skeptics of it's scientific viability as well as the
costs considering it's unproven.

Key quote:

> “There's just no clinical evidence [that the treatment will be beneficial],”
> argues Tony Wyss-Coray, the Stanford neuroscientist behind a key 2014 mice
> parabiosis study. For one thing, Karmazin’s trial does not use a placebo
> control group and participants can be as young as 35.

------
zbobet2012
The fact that the silicon valley episode was based in reality is super
disturbing...

~~~
s73ver_
I read Dan Lyon's book "Disrupted" about the time he spent with HubSpot before
becoming a writer for Silicon Valley. He says that there were times where he
would pitch something that he actually saw or happened to him, and the other
writers would shoot it down because it just didn't seem realistic.

------
oblib
This is surely a response to a fear of death. Perhaps a chance to beat the
devil?

Life has been an adventure and dying will be one too. Hell, I'm surprised I've
lived this long so everyday is good, but I'd feel pretty creepy inside if I
did something like this.

I'm not a believer in nothingness. I feel we carry what we do with us forever.
I wouldn't want this following me, not even from 10,000 years away.

~~~
tyrw
Would you get a heart transplant to save your life?

~~~
jstewartmobile
Do we take hearts from healthy people to replace hearts that are still working
just fine?

~~~
yellowapple
This is pretty much the premise of _The Island_.

------
perpetualcrayon
This is one among many signs that we (as a species) have reached a point where
we no longer need money as a means to accumulate wealth. We need money as a
means to moderate consumption. The ideas for how to spend extraordinary wealth
will only continue to get weirder.

------
brianwawok
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBA0AH-
LSbo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBA0AH-LSbo)

I wonder if they knew this...

~~~
thret
That's exactly the Silicon Valley S4E5 link I was looking for, thank you.

------
richardthered
I think the Dark Crystal is a better reference...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4voZl28ADM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4voZl28ADM)

------
21
"I'm not really in the camp of saying this will provide immortality but I
think it comes pretty close, essentially."

We've all seen marketing speak, but wow :)

~~~
ada1981
Had this on my clipboard to paste here.

This guy is saying this is pretty close to immortality.

He has no idea what he is talking about, what a scam artist.

------
alphonsegaston
Glad that the wealthy have moved on to actual vampirism after decades of the
financial/metaphorical variety.

~~~
tarr11
This would make a great SF story.

Over time, the demand for young blood continued to grow but there was a
stubbornly limited supply. A new batch of YCombinator "blood startups" aimed
to disrupt the industry by supplying devices that made it more convenient to
infuse blood directly into your bloodstream.

One company based in Menlo Park, dracul.ai, developed a set of titanium
prosthetic fangs that would eliminate the need for an expensive IV procedure
and hospital visit. Instead, the blood was extracted directly into the fangs,
which were than purified by nanotubes and fed directly into users'
bloodstreams.

Scattered reports came out that wealthy users were luring young candidates to
their large Woodsite and Atherton estates and extracting blood from victicms,
without consent.

Company founder (who simply goes by monicker "Vlad") vehemently denies such
allegations.

~~~
sdenton4
My favorite part of the original Dracula is all of the weird shit that starts
happening just because Dracula's in the neighborhood. Rat infestations,
mysterious plagues, the madmen in the asylum getting frisky...

Obviously, this could all translate perfectly into a story of late capitalist
vampires living in a condo-converted church in the mission...

------
narrator
This is kind of old news. The new hotness is GDF11 injections.

------
pmorici
As close as you can get to real life vampires.

~~~
weberc2
My mental image is Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.

------
marsrover
One step closer to cattle.

~~~
FractalNerve
We're there already, officially: [https://phys.org/news/2015-12-china-clone-
factory-scientist-...](https://phys.org/news/2015-12-china-clone-factory-
scientist-eyes.html)

What can be done, will be done. Too much to win with military budgets here,
that's only what hits the more and more strongly regulated public news.

Edit: My sentiment is to no trust any goverment denying mass experiments. Too
much insanity in the politic, bureaucratic power lust.

------
Gatsky
I don't know how this got ethics approval. Doing a trial in 600 people without
a placebo or randomisation when you are using a potentially harmful treatment
like transfusion is ridiculous.

Of course, they aren't interested in proving whether it actually works. They
will report that patients experienced subjective benefits and then engineer
some surrogate blood biomarker of youth that 'improves' after transfusion.
Then they will sell a transfusion product for at least the next 10-20 years it
will take a proper trial to be conducted by someone else.

------
Roritharr
I was expecting this to happen after the first news broke of the "findings" a
while ago....

Can we ethically ask if it does work?

~~~
burkaman
Yes, test animals first, and then find volunteers who are willing to be tested
without being paid. Blood transfusion has less ethical issues than something
like an organ transplant, since there's no permanent effects on the donor.

~~~
yellowapple
I'm pretty confident that donors won't touch this with a ten foot pole unless
they're paid.

The only reason why I'm willing to part with my supposedly-precious O- blood
is because I'm reasonably confident that the blood will be going to people who
actually need it. Otherwise-healthy old people using my blood as some kind of
sick fountain of youth completely throws that dynamic out of the window.
That's _my_ blood, and I will be paid for both the blood itself and the time
out of my day, and I will be paid _very_ handsomely, or the old rich people
will be out of luck.

This is _especially_ true during clinical trials.

------
tareqak
Arguably, this business has sort of tested the waters for the market value of
developing artificial plasma for the same purpose.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_substitute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_substitute)

------
nserrino
If it does work, then this is the first step to mass adoption: early adoption
by the wealthy.

------
mmagin
Via [http://uk.businessinsider.com/young-blood-plasma-
transfusion...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/young-blood-plasma-transfusions-
anti-aging-remedy-2017-1?r=US&IR=T)

"He adds that because patients are paying it wouldn't be fair to give anyone a
placebo."

~~~
coliveira
In other words, there will be obvious scientific challenges to the validity of
such a study...

~~~
IncRnd
Exactly. It's not a real study.

------
andreasgonewild
Yuck; if that's where awesome profits takes you, I'll pass. Can you get more
detached from reality?

~~~
coss
I'm not sure why you wouldn't want this? Must suck being old and tired all the
time. I'll take youthfulness over that any day.

~~~
ams6110
At age 52 I can honestly say I don't feel more tired or generally any worse in
any way than I did when I was 16. My eyes are about the only thing that has
noticeably aged. I'm a bit far sighted at this point

~~~
xenihn
Do you still exercise? I personally think that the biggest part of feeling
more tired with aging is that people just stop exercising. Not exercising
less, just completely stopping, because you get caught in a cycle of being too
tired from work/commuting to exercise, and having less energy due to a lack of
exercise.

------
tomc1985
Funny, I just listened to an episode of Nightfall that was just exactly this.
(The Blood Countess)

------
djvdorp
Orphan Black, anyone?

------
ccdev
Looks like Blood Boy is now more real.

------
brooklyntribe
It works, so go for it! :-)

------
spraak
So, honestly, how far off are the conspiracy theories of what aborted babies
are used for? :S

~~~
IncRnd
"Researchers typically take tissue samples from a fetus that has been aborted
(under conditions permitted by law) and grow cells from the tissue in Petri
dishes.

"Many of the uses of fetal tissue — and much of the debate — are not new.
"It's just that the public is finding out about it," said Insoo Hyun,
associate professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University.

[http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/17/health/fetal-tissue-
explainer/...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/17/health/fetal-tissue-
explainer/index.html)

------
reasonattlm
The aim is to see whether or not this can usefully change the balance of
signaling molecules to, say, spur greater stem cell activity. There has been a
trial in Alzheimer's patients, but some signs in animal studies that
transfusions from young to old don't do much. It seems useful to speed up the
process of determining whether or not transfusions are an interesting line of
research, or something that only looked promising. That means more patients
and larger trial populations, which Ambrosia is working on.

These transfusion initiatives are one of a number of outgrowths of parabiosis
research in mice. Heterochronic parabiosis is the name given to connecting the
circulatory systems of an old and a young individual. The older mouse shows a
modest rejuvenation in a number of measures of aging, and the younger mouse
shows some greater signs of aging - though most of the focus here has been on
the old mouse. In recent years this technique has been used to search for
potentially actionable differences in levels of specific signal molecules
circulating in the bloodstream. For example, stem cell activity declines with
aging, and this is likely governed by signaling processes. If levels of the
most relevant molecules could be adjusted in old individuals, it might be
possible to produce benefits that look quite similar to those of stem cell
therapies: increased regeneration and tissue maintenance. This class of
approach puts damaged, aged cells back to work, and does little to address
causes of aging based on accumulation of metabolic waste, such as cross-links
that stiffen blood vessels, but to the degree that it can improve health it is
probably worthy of further investigation in the same way as stem cell therapy
was back in the day.

One potential shortcut to the production of therapies is to perform
transfusions: deliver young blood or young plasma to old individuals. I call
this a potential shortcut because it really is still very uncertain as to (a)
whether or not the whole process works in humans anywhere near as well as it
works in mice, and (b) whether or not transfusions will recapture the effects
of parabiosis to a useful degree. The evidence in mice suggests so far that it
may not. It is possible to paint all sorts of scenarios in which the fact that
old and young cells are in contact, feeding signals to one another in a
feedback loop, is necessary to produce beneficial changes in the old
individual. It is also possible to imagine signals with a short half-life,
that won't be recaptured in transfusions, or changes in the old environment
that are based on an increased level of specific signal molecules. That
increased level won't be changed in the slightest by the arrival of some
amount of young blood plasma. Only reduced levels are likely to be impacted
that way.

In any case, testing and perhaps ruling out the fast path of transfusions
seems like a fair plan. If it works, it will draw in more funding to build the
better option of manipulating signal molecule levels directly. It if doesn't
work, that result will direct scientists to focus on more productive lines of
research and development. There is some grumbling from the expected quarters
over the structuring of this present initiative by Ambrosia, but getting it
done is better than not getting it done. The data will be useful in the sense
that only sizable effects are interesting, and thus before and after data for
participants will be convincing. Marginal effects, of the sort in which it
would have been useful to have a control group to establish whether or not any
benefits actually resulted, would mean that this probably isn't worth further
exploration. Still, this well demonstrates the fact that many scientists who
work within the heavily regulated, slow, and repressive system of medical
development really don't like it when people try to get things done more
rapidly and more inventively. To the extent that it closes down productive
avenues, this is a dangerous attitude.

Recent commentary suggests that none of the results so far are either large
enough or extensive enough to definitively be something other than the placebo
effect, chance, or other items such as a patient making lifestyle changes. I
think there is some skepticism regarding the potential effectiveness of
transfusions of young blood in any case; the data is somewhat mixed, and
underlying theory on what is going on still in flux. Recent research suggests
that the effects observed in parabiosis studies of mice with joined
circulatory systems are due to a dilution of harmful factors in old blood
rather than a delivery of helpful factors from young blood, for example. If
the case, that would mean that transfusions should produce very limited
results at best. Still, obtaining data is the important thing, and that is
what is being done here. Those complaining the loudest should put in the work
to raise funds and run a study they way they would prefer to.

------
fiatjaf
"The super rich"? You mean this as a class of people? I have a lot of money,
but I'm not doing it, so I'm probably not on the "super rich" class, right?

~~~
true_religion
Saying "I have a lot of money" is hardly convincing evidence of being "super
rich".

