Have the first batch of Silicon Valley tycoons who pursued "immortality" been diagnosed with terminal illnesses?

Ever since Qin Shi Huang sent Xu Fu to sail across the sea in search of the immortality elixir, humanity has never truly given up the fantasy of eternal life.

In the old days, Chinese nobles placed their hopes on alchemy and cultivating immortality; nowadays, the wealthy elites in Silicon Valley have turned modern medicine into the alchemy furnace of the new era.

They use blood exchange, stem cells, gene therapy and cell reprogramming to fight against aging, break the human body down into groups of data that can be monitored, iterated and repaired, and inadvertently prop up a "longevity business" valued at more than 30 billion US dollars.

Among this group of people, Bryan Johnson is one of the most radical believers.

He spends 2 million US dollars every year, swallows up to 111 pills at most in a single day, lets more than 30 medical staff work around his physical condition, and even claims that he will use stem cells to clone a "younger version of himself" to replace aging organs and blood in the future.

However, recently, this self-proclaimed "the most biologically measured man in the world" has been diagnosed with incurable autoimmune gastritis. What is even more absurd is that:

At the age of 48, he had never even undergone a routine colonoscopy before this diagnosis.

01

Immortality Believers, Are They Treating Themselves as Guinea Pigs?

To start with an explanation, the so-called "clone a younger version of himself" is actually just Bryan's marketing hype. What he is actually doing is only using the IPSC technology to reprogram his own blood cells into a state similar to embryonic stem cells, which is far from the cloning level that the public imagines.

Bryan's description of this technology is very radical.

He wants to use these stem cells called "baby version of Bryan" to test new drugs, make transplantable organs, and even let them replace his own son in the future to become the "new blood pack for his blood exchange therapy".

If you are still not familiar with the name Bryan Johnson before, you should have realized who this Silicon Valley immortality maniac is when you see the term "blood exchange therapy".

In May 2023, in order to reverse aging, 45-year-old Bryan drew 1 liter of blood from his 17-year-old son and injected it into his own body.

The theoretical basis for this operation is that some scientists have found that if the blood circulation systems of young mice and old mice are connected, various physiological indicators of old mice can be significantly improved.

Bryan followed this example, exchanging blood with young people (including his own son) 6 times in a row on a monthly basis, and even transfused his own plasma into the body of his 70-year-old father.

And this is just one of the many bizarre operations Bryan has done in his pursuit of immortality over the years.

He heard that follistatin gene therapy can extend lifespan, but it has not been approved by the FDA in the United States, so he traveled thousands of miles to a small island in Honduras to receive this treatment together with his father;

He learned that stem cells can repair joint wear, so without any serious joint disease, he injected 300 million stem cells airlifted from Sweden into 6 of his own joints;

The anti-aging community says the compound Rapamycin is very effective, so he took it continuously for 5 years;

Feeling that he looked older than his actual age, he then injected body fat into his face for facial filling.

He even used focused shock waves to impact his lower body 3 times a week for a period of time, trying to achieve the so-called "technological aphrodisiac".

Taking up to 111 pills a day, undergoing multiple indicator checks, having more than 30 professional medical staff on standby around the clock, and spending 2 million US dollars on basic costs a year, this is Bryan Johnson's expensive and wild daily anti-aging routine.

So what is the result of all these operations?

Conventional anti-aging practices do show visible effects, but those radical small experiments that the wealthy conducted on himself have all yielded poor results.

Bryan chose to give up after trying blood exchange for more than half a year, not because this operation made him bear the infamy of "Silicon Valley Vampire", but because he found that this therapy "did not show any benefits at all".

For another example, after using Rapamycin and trying multiple medication regimens, Bryan found that not only did he not return to the age of 18, but he also began to suffer from recurrent skin and soft tissue infections, abnormal blood lipids and blood sugar and other symptoms — it was worse to use it than not to use it.

Injecting body fat into the face to maintain a youthful look caused Bryan to have a severe allergic reaction, his face was swollen to the point that it affected his vision, and he stopped the treatment soon.

In July this year, this wealthy man who tried every day to "rejuvenate" his internal organs suddenly announced to the public: It took him 11 years to realize that he actually has an incurable chronic immune disease called autoimmune gastritis (AIG).

The stomach that he has been trying to reverse aging for has actually had problems from the very beginning.

In addition, STAT also revealed a very absurd detail in its related report: In the process of discovering this disease, 48-year-old Bryan decided to undergo a colonoscopy that he had never done before.

It should be noted that the United States currently recommends that people at average risk start colorectal cancer screening at the age of 45. In other words, this self-proclaimed "man who has been biologically measured the most times in the world" has not even done the most routine medical checkup.

This makes Bryan Johnson's grand plan for immortality reveal a faint sense of absurdity.

As bystanders, you may think that this tycoon must have been obsessed with rejuvenation to the point of losing his mind, but as a shrewd businessman, all the above actions are reasonable in Bryan's worldview.

02

Immortality Is a Business Targeting the Wealthy

Speaking of which, we have to talk about Bryan Johnson's view on immortality.

Bryan said in an interview that his current way of thinking is greatly influenced by the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker. The latter's thought can be summed up in one sentence:

Everything can be quantified.

In Bryan's view, all problems in this world can be abstracted into data, functions and operating systems, and iterated and optimized by means of controlling variables.

Here is a very typical example.

Bryan said that although he looks very healthy today, he once had self-destructive tendencies due to years of chronic depression, and once wanted to binge eat from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. every day. These experiences made him realize a problem:

"I can't trust that I will definitely do what is most beneficial to myself."

So he split his own consciousness into countless blocks:

The part that wants to binge eat is called "Evening Bryan";

The part that takes care of children is called "Father Bryan";

The part that wants high energy is called "Work Bryan"...

What he has to do is to fully quantify the needs of "every Bryan", then use algorithms to weigh these needs, and make the mathematically optimal decisions for himself.

Bryan calls this operation mode "Autonomous Self", which means getting better "with data rather than subjective emotions".

After he sold his payment company to Paypal and cashed out at least 300 million US dollars to achieve financial freedom, he began to apply this philosophy to his grand immortality plan: He took out 200 million US dollars, used 100 million of it to found a brain-computer interface company, and invested the other 100 million in his anti-aging project "Blueprint".

At the beginning of the project, Bryan broke his own body down into more than 70 organs and a series of biological indicators, tested them, and tried to make all organs and indicators return to their peak state at the age of 18 through a series of treatments and experiments, so as to achieve comprehensive anti-aging effects.

Using the sentence pattern that AI likes most, in Bryan's world, there is no overall health preservation, only local optimization.

After being diagnosed with stomach disease, his first reaction was not to be depressed, but to immediately propose four different levels of treatment methods, trying to overcome this incurable disease. What's more, some of these treatment methods are still only at the theoretical level.

And as mentioned earlier, after he tried the stem cell injection into joints and follistatin gene therapy, Bryan immediately published articles to publicly show whether his physiological indicators had improved.

For this anti-aging pioneer, his body has now become a "real-time market quotation screen", and the "quotation on the screen" is the change of the biological age of each part of his body — so as to reveal "where the contemporary anti-aging science has actually reached".

This seems very extreme, but it is actually very commercial.

Because Bryan is indeed monetizing his anti-aging experience through traffic by publishing high-frequency, slightly exaggerated self-statements and interviews, so that he can earn exposure and income while pursuing immortality.

According to a 2025 report by The New York Times, "Blueprint" is not just this wealthy man's private immortality fantasy. It also sells supplements, protein powder and various tests to more than 40,000 customers, with an annual revenue of 40 million US dollars, which seems to be close to breaking even.

In today's Silicon Valley, Bryan is far from the only one immersed in the dream of immortality.

03

The Immortality Dream of the Wealthy in Silicon Valley

The tycoons in Silicon Valley have been dreaming about technology-driven anti-aging and eternal life for nearly 30 years.

As early as 1997, Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, established a medical foundation, invested 430 million US dollars in 15 years, and funded hundreds of researchers, just to let them answer a basic question first:

Why do people grow old after all?

Soon, the concept of immortality was broken down into a series of specific technical problems, and several schools that tried to challenge the laws of nature were created in Silicon Valley:

Represented by Peter Thiel, the founder of Paypal, some people want to freeze their bodies after death and wait for resurrection in the future;

Represented by Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon, some people have bet heavily on technologies to re-juvenate senescent cells;

Represented by Martine Rothblatt, the founder of SiriusXM, some people are researching genetically modified pig organs and 3D printed organs;

Others are working on gene therapy, stem cells, anti-aging drugs, high-end testing and so on...