Who doesn’t want to look young forever? Let’s face it, we all do. That’s why the skincare industry is continuously blooming and photo editing will never go out of style. It’s the same story with digital de-aging where actors are made to look significantly younger than they are with the aid of special effects.
But what if you can go beyond looking to actually BEING younger than your age? That’s the question 45-year-old Bryan Johnson is hoping to answer by trading blood with his son.
What If Aging Is Aviodable?
We’ve all been told (and have been made to accept) that aging is an inevitable part of life, but Bryan Johnson is dedicated to proving this theory wrong. A successful leader in technology and science, he’s already spending a whopping sum of at least two million dollars annually to alter his biological age.
How does he plan to do this? By injecting himself with Talmage’s (his teenage son) blood and plasma.
Johnson’s De-Aging Story
The public first got to know of Johnson’s de-aging story in a detailed Bloomberg article. In the article, it was revealed that he collaborated with at least 30 health practitioners to monitor all dimensions of his wellness and overall health.
All health practitioners had a goal— to ensure that he had the “brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, tendons, teeth, skin, hair, bladder, penis, and rectum of an 18-year-old.”
Project Blueprint
Like a dedicated scientist who knows his onions, Bryan has a name for his attempt to be 27 years younger than he is—Project Blueprint. This project leaves no aspect of his life untouched. He’s restricted to a daily 1,977-calorie vegan diet, strict exercise plan, and controlled sleep pattern.
To achieve this goal, Johnson will also have to track his body using various invasive and non-invasive measures, including blood tests, MRI, colonoscopy, ultrasound, etc.
A Transgenerational Blood Swap
Next, Bryan has to take some blood and plasma from Talmage. According to reports, an anonymous donor had previously given him a blood transfusion. However, this time around, his plasma donations will come from Talmage and Richard, his 70-year-old dad.
Bryan has a YouTube channel where he documented the procedure. During the procedure, he was heard saying, “Hey, look at that. This is how you can tell if I’m a fraud or not. The color is nice. It’s pristine.”
A Delicate Procedure
The blood transfusions were carried out in a Dallas clinic, with Richard and Talmage donating a liter of their blood each. After collecting their blood, it was converted into red blood cells, platelets, white blood cells, and plasma batches.
Soon after the collection process, Bryan’s veins were injected with Talmage’s blood to aid his blood rejuvenation and heal cellular damage. Richard also received a liter of Bryan’s blood.
Something Gross and Dangerous
Biochemist Charles Brenner of City of Hope National Medical Center has this to say about Bryan’s idea, “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.”
Although experts like Brenner don’t agree that humans can rejuvenate their bodies by exchanging their blood for a younger person’s, Bryan is convinced that it works.
Disregarding the Naysayers
Not all experts agree with Brenner, though. As you can expect, Bryan’s health practitioners lead the opposing team and, together with their patients, hope to prove the “killjoys” wrong.
Regardless of the skepticism regarding this attempt, they’re going ahead with it. Their focus is to kill degradation or diseases that contribute to aging, and there’s no stopping them. Bryan has promised to publish the plasma switch-out results when they’re ready.
A Case of Mortality Anxiety
Although Bryan is pretty confident in the outcome of his project, Brenner continues to maintain his position. He believes that Bryan’s behavior may be one of the “side effects” of an anxiety disorder.
“The people going into these clinics who want anti-aging infusions basically have an anxiety problem…they have an anxiety problem about their mortality,” he says. We believe that it’s only a matter of time till we tell who’s right and wrong between them.
There’s More Where That Came From
The Project Blueprint isn’t the only groundbreaking adventure Bryan Johnson has embarked on. Bryan is also the founder of Kernel, a neuroscience company that aims at hacking the human brain. He is so dedicated to this project that he has pumped in at least $100,000 of his own money into it.
Bryan wants to understand the human brain like the back of his palm to enable scientists to program it to make us healthier and smarter. This is one scientist with lofty dreams for humanity, and we hope he gets the breakthrough he’s been seeking.
