Man spending $2m a year to reduce biological age uses his son, 17, as his 'blood boy'
Software developer Bryan Johnson from Dallas, Texas is working towards one goal - to have the body of a teenager again.
The 45-year-old, who's estimated to have a net worth of around $400 million, hopes to develop a new kind of anti-ageing process, working from the inside out.
That includes getting all of his organs, including his skin, bladder, brain, penis, heart, and rectum, to that of an 18-year-old.
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It turns out, the quest for eternal youth is an incredibly expensive one, with outrageous funds being spent on state-of-the-art medical tests and treatments, experts to craft the perfect eating, sleeping, and training regimen to keep Bryan in tip-top shape, and a team of doctors to help him through the extreme process.
It involves an hour of exercise a day (with more high-intensity training three times per week), a vegan diet of precisely 1,977 calories, sleeping at the exact same time every night, and undergoing all sorts of new-fangled medical procedures.
That last one is where his son Talmage comes in.
As part of the latest development in his project, Bryan has enlisted his teen son as what's known as a 'blood boy'.
If you're not familiar with the term 'blood boy', it's just as creepy as it sounds.
The richest of the rich who hope to delay the ageing process for as long as they can have been buying the plasma from 'blood boys' (which are essentially just young, fit donors) and infusing it into their blood stream.
Typically, plasma transfusions are performed to treat patients suffering with conditions like liver disease, blood clotting deficiencies, or burns.
But anti-ageing fanatics believe that injecting themselves with younger plasma could rejuvenate their bodies and keep them living a healthy lifestyle for longer.
While the controversial procedure costs thousands of dollars, donors see just a small fraction of that - so long as they pass the rigorous testing required to ensure they're healthy and youthful enough for the cause.
Rather than going through all that testing to check of a random donor is suitable for the job, Bryan decided to use his own flesh and blood.
The father and son have even roped Bryan's dad Richard, 70, into the process, in what's been described as a tri-generational swapping of blood plasma.
Here's how it works: first, Talmage has a litre of blood removed and split apart by a machine into plasma, red and white blood cells, and platelets.
Then Bryan does the same thing while Talmage's plasma is fed into his veins.
Finally, Richard has a litre of blood drained in the same process while Bryan's plasma is fed into his veins.
Although the FDA has previously warned against using plasma infusions to accommodate anti-ageing, arguing that there's 'no proven clinical benefit', Bryan and lots like him swear by the process.
Speaking to Bloomberg during the transfusion, Bryan's dad Richard got a little bit emotional.
"Yeah, I won the lottery," he said. "There has to be a benefit in getting this much volume of him."
Whether the process will actually do anything for Bryan and Richard and their organs remains to be seen, but researchers are convinced it's going to fail.
Speaking to Bloomberg, biochemist from City of Hope National Medical Centre Charles Brenner said: "We have not learned enough to suggest this is a viable human treatment for anything.
"To me, it’s gross, evidence-free and relatively dangerous."
Bryan is hoping to publish the data results from this procedure in the coming months.
Ali Condon