Fwiw, people mocked him long before this news broke. People aren't hating on him as a result of his diagnosis, just found a new (and admittedly ironic) point to pick at.
He's hubristic and selfish. None of his "research" is going to benefit anyone (himself included), making this essentially a huge waste of time and resources. Bryan will die just like all the rest of us, despite being very rich and self-obsessed. He could spend his enormous wealth on supporting real research and proper studies on real diseases that hurt lots of people. Instead he's acting like just another huckster promising a fountain of youth. He does this using bombastic terms and taboo methods (e.g. using his son as a blood boy), in a way that's calculated to direct enormous public attention towards himself. The science he advocates for is sketchy at best and the results of all his
"experiments" will tell us nothing because we can't reproduce his methods (his program allegedly costs >$1M per year), nothing is blinded or controlled, and N=1. He's a bad person who uses bad methods to glorify himself and now he probably gave himself an autoimmune disease. He deserves to be mocked.
> He could spend his enormous wealth on supporting real research and proper studies on real diseases that hurt lots of people
There we go again. There's always that one guy in the crowd, who knows better what you should be spending your money on. Also, that guy has the moral right to tell you. He is a really good person, you know! So you should listen! You should also thank him.
I mean, you never know for sure. It's all just PR and messaging. Especially from a tech CEO with money. The thing that I struggle to reconcile is how much he's been involving his teenage son in this experimentation. That's a pretty gigantic red flag for me, I guess.
This is heartbreaking to see (from the doc about this guy, he seemed to genuinely believe this was a good idea). A good warning about the limits of control humans have over things (and why brute-forcing it can often lead to bad outcomes).
I wonder if the methods he used are any better than all sorts of incantations or ancient “cures”…a worthy goal that proved money can’t solve the ultimate disease…yet!
It literally is, and in many circles (illicit drugs, bodybuilding, cosmestic...) it's thanks to those community that we have early-on data. Go look for information about latest psychedelic derivatives, user reviews is the only thing we have accessible, it is Science, a doctor is aware of side-effects because of reporting, user reporting (assuming relatively trusted) is genuinely useful for the world.
It's not good data for any particular procedure because he's doing so many at the same time so you can't really use the data to support any particular procedure in a rigorous way.
Agreed, but many drugs have a direct effect, not subtle and it's pretty much immediate to know, let say a user try that new sub-q injectable from a shady forum that discuss X compound that is supposed to cure acne, then follow protocols from other users, then do their report, often with photos, it's useful even if it's not standard, as you have a clear picture of before/after usage of that drug (it's probably fair to say that the acne clearing is that isn't placebo effect), it's useful even after a drug is authorized on the market as well as it gives additional user reports of efficiency. Realistically, some data is better than none.
Saying that wouldn't be useful is kinda like saying HN/Reddit isn't useful because it's all anecdotal, that applies to almost all topics in life.
Lastly, let's not pretend that most doctors do actually follow properly a patient blood before/during/after a course of a drug, in most cases, doctor will just ask How did it go, any side effects?... That's a new "data" for the doc, all anecdotal, almost the same value as a "trusted" rando on Reddit.
Why would you say that? I'm not a fan of the guy, because I think he's searching for unicorns, but he is 100% engaging in pure science. Hypothesis, experiment, data, falsify, repeat.
The ultimate thing he's testing is not whether this drug or that can extend life expectancy by a few percent, but whether a complete lifestyle regime can indefinitely defer aging. The answer to this is almost certainly 'no', but if somehow he did succeed then confounding variables outside of his regime are not going to play a factor, because it's something far away from what anybody has achieved. And so at that point you'd be able to see 'okay, this does work' and then try to minimize it down to isolate the most key causal factors. And the mountain of data he's collecting in the interim would provide a huge head start on that.
I thought the article was talking about his blood donations to explain any part of how he ended up with this disease but no, he just has it (for some reason) as a result of something that happened at some point.
No he takes blood transfusions from his son along with a lot of other questionable procedures and supplements. No one really knows why he developed this problem and it's pretty common but in association with so many exotic medical procedures it's spawned a lot of assumptions about the cause.
Yeah that's what I thought. Which is pretty weird.
Funnily enough donating blood actually can have big benefits for health - they did a study on Firemen who have massively higher PFAS blood levels (exposure to fire fighting foams). Turns out by regularly donating blood it forces the body to make new blood which was the only reliable way to dilute the "forever chemicals".
There are some side effects with blood transfusions that may be an experiment in itself. For example, blood bags can transfer plasticizers to the blood, which is a method to detect if athletes have been doping.
To add some context, this is a relatively common form of gastritis impacting depending on location 3-5% of the population called Autoimmune Gastritis.
Now his biohacking might be related it might not, the issue with the guy is that he does too many interventions at the same time so it’s hard to really tell what’s going on. He also has a core belief of equating looking younger with his interventions working, to his defence he also runs more rigorous analysis on his body. Overall he isn’t the most interesting bio hacker out there, but he is the loudest.
Whenever I look up diseases and it reports a statistic such as "3-5%" I often feel like either I must not be interpreting it correctly, or it is so region-biased as to not be useful for how I'm consuming the data. Because it's hard to reconcile that apparently in the ballpark of 1 in 20 people have this?
It seems extremely common as people age. Your body just starts to break down as we get older and this is one, amongst many, ways that this manifests. A quick search suggests it shows up in about 50% of people over 70. [1]
It's not going to just affect 70 year olds. It's going to be a gradual descent downward. So just making up some numbers perhaps it's 40% or whatever of 60 year olds, 30% of 50 year olds, and so on. And then aggregated out across the population it's going to be a relatively high number, especially as fertility issues drive the average age ever higher.
There is nothing more valuable than doing what you believe and love in the life. Especially when doing no harm, furthermore trying to solve a great problem with great benefits for society.
Is incredible but understandable, many don´t get it.
His idea would be cool if not for the lindy effect: each one of his "tests" has a somewhat low probability of extending his life by a few months / years.
However each of his tests, as they are new, also has a smaller probability of having ruin effect: killing him or leaving him disabled in the process. Multiplying the treatments increases significantly the downside risks (1 failure is enough) while the positive will not compound (you will need many of them to work to see a significant effect).
It seems like a high-prevalence low-impact disease. Considering how much he self-scans it’s no surprise he found one of these. The cancer is not particularly dangerous and lifespan is barely affected by it.
Someone should make a website showing the oldest living biohackers. Presenting it as a sort of leaderboard
edit: I don't actually ethically endorse this. I was moreso poking fun at the morbidity of the biohacking influencer space which invites people to obsess over an influencer's health and inevitably turns into something gruesome when said influencer has a tragic health outcome.
The vast majority of people gotta get stressed to be able to buy food before retirement age. I wonder how old she was when she started the low-stress lifestyle.
He hired real doctors right? Not like witch doctors or faith healers or something? I wonder was there an issue of them not being able to tell the boss no, no matter how screwy his ideas were?
I know Putin is also doing a similar thing, he has a team of doctors who are supposed to keep him alive forever. But he certainly seems the sort of boss you cant disagree with or give bad news to (we can see that in how he commands the war) so maybe he will also hopefully die sooner than we think.
The article suggests he eats a vegan diet and exercises daily, so it's not like he's just popping pills on the couch between McDonalds meals. He seems like a complete loon in every respect, but it seems a bit unfair to say he just wants to take pills and nothing else.
> As well as blood transfusions, Johnson follows a strict daily routine that includes monitoring his body fat, heart rate variability, blood, stool samples, and the number of erections he has per night. Every day he also takes two dozen medicines at 5 a.m
61 comments
[ 42.8 ms ] story [ 2080 ms ] threadThere we go again. There's always that one guy in the crowd, who knows better what you should be spending your money on. Also, that guy has the moral right to tell you. He is a really good person, you know! So you should listen! You should also thank him.
> He deserves to be mocked.
Just look how good this guy is.
Isn't getting "hacked" suppose to be a bad thing ?
That definitely doesn't seem to be the case, especially if you look beyond his bio-hacking endeavors. His treatment of employees and ex-partners seems pretty horrible: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/technology/bryan-johnson-...
Saying that wouldn't be useful is kinda like saying HN/Reddit isn't useful because it's all anecdotal, that applies to almost all topics in life.
Lastly, let's not pretend that most doctors do actually follow properly a patient blood before/during/after a course of a drug, in most cases, doctor will just ask How did it go, any side effects?... That's a new "data" for the doc, all anecdotal, almost the same value as a "trusted" rando on Reddit.
Funnily enough donating blood actually can have big benefits for health - they did a study on Firemen who have massively higher PFAS blood levels (exposure to fire fighting foams). Turns out by regularly donating blood it forces the body to make new blood which was the only reliable way to dilute the "forever chemicals".
https://www.wada-ama.org/en/resources/scientific-research/ov...
And then maybe a percentage of those people have a more debilitating version ?
[1] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11879357/
And he looks pretty much exactly his age.
Is incredible but understandable, many don´t get it.
However each of his tests, as they are new, also has a smaller probability of having ruin effect: killing him or leaving him disabled in the process. Multiplying the treatments increases significantly the downside risks (1 failure is enough) while the positive will not compound (you will need many of them to work to see a significant effect).
Seems interesting but not consequential.
It's also not cancer. AIG makes him more susceptible to certain cancers, but he does not have cancer yet.
And looking at what he's done compared to the symptoms, it's possible he's been inadvertently self-medicating his condition for a bit.
He's currently blaming his lifestyle before his "biohacking" for his condition.
edit: I don't actually ethically endorse this. I was moreso poking fun at the morbidity of the biohacking influencer space which invites people to obsess over an influencer's health and inevitably turns into something gruesome when said influencer has a tragic health outcome.
But yeah, if we're talking seriously - seems like this boils down to a ton of luck (good genetics and a secure enough employment or opportunity).
I know Putin is also doing a similar thing, he has a team of doctors who are supposed to keep him alive forever. But he certainly seems the sort of boss you cant disagree with or give bad news to (we can see that in how he commands the war) so maybe he will also hopefully die sooner than we think.
Oh really? have him told you so? Amazing. Did he give you more details about the treatments?
This man is not mentally well...