A growing area of investment by the world’s richest people is life extension, the emergent techno-scientific field that seeks to expand human life spans, reduce aging, and (in the mind of some overly ambitious hopefuls) cheat death itself. The gist is this: rich people want to live forever, and they’re willing to spend the GDP of a small nation to achieve it.
The New York Post recently interviewed a corporate executive who said he feared that the development of such technologies would lead to the rise of a race of “posh, privileged zombies.” Phil Cleary, the founder of the SmartWater Group, a forensics contractor, told the newspaper: “At the rate technology is evolving, it will only be a matter of time before life-extending drugs become freely available to those who can afford them.”
Apparently taking it upon himself to say what the rest of us watching this hubristic spectacle have been thinking all along, Cleary went full rampage mode against the band of plutocrats: “Silicon Valley’s dogged pursuit of the fountain of youth is a fear-led, ego-driven folly that comes at a terrible humanitarian cost to the planet and to its most vulnerable inhabitants,” he said.
Cleary, who aptly told the newspaper that tech billionaires could better serve humanity by donating to communities that need it, further predicted that life extension technologies would ultimately go to the most privileged: “A pill that keeps people alive, even by a few decades, would create an unjust, inequitable world packed with posh, privileged zombies—predominately white, middle-class folk who could afford to buy the drugs in the first place,” Cleary said. “The billionaires behind this dangerous research should therefore quit playing God and reevaluate what ‘life’ really means.”
“Keeping children alive until at least their 18th birthday is unquestionably more important to humanity than extending the run of those privileged few who have already had the chance to see the world, to have children of their own, and to realize their own special ambitions,” Cleary added.
It’s unclear if the life-extension field can really deliver on its promises, however. If there’s one person who has served as the poster boy for this movement, it’s Bryan Johnson, the 47-year-old venture capitalist who, through the apparent miracles of de-aging technology, went from a normal-looking middle-aged guy to an entity that self-admittedly resembles a vampire. Last time we checked, Johnson had begun selling a line of supplements, dubbed Blueprint, as well as a “Longevity Mix,” designed to keep you young. Johnson also recently injected someone else’s fat into his face as part of a “bio-hack,” had an allergic reaction, and suffered a (presumably temporary) ballooning of his facial features. In short: if this is what improved longevity looks like, it’s weird that it looks so unhealthy.
Many other tech entrepreneurs and billionaires are obviously obsessed with de-aging and eternal life, albeit in a much less personalized way than Johnson. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is said to have invested $180 million into a startup dubbed Retro Biosciences, the likes of which wants to add ten years to the human lifespan. Meanwhile, tech magnates like Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel have also dumped large truckloads of cash into similar pursuits. Thiel, who has reportedly said he hopes to live to 120, is said to have provided funding to a non-profit known as the Methuselah Foundation, which aims to make “90 the new 50 by 2030.” Bezos is said to have invested some $3 billion into a biotechnology company, Altos Labs, that seeks to reduce and even reverse the natural aging process.
Look, living a long time and being healthy sounds really great, and if these technologies can effectively do that, and then be distributed in an equitable, affordable fashion amongst the global population, that would be amazing. That said, history tells us that when advances in health and technology do come along, the benefits of those innovations generally go to the most privileged. The U.S. doesn’t even have socialized medicine yet and, under the incoming Trump administration, Americans’ access to healthcare seems destined for challenges. It’s difficult to imagine that live-forever-pills wouldn’t be prohibitively expensive to most of us. If these billionaires’ wildest dreams are realized, it portends the rise of a permanent ruling class.
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English (US) ·