Peter Thiel Wants To Inject Himself With Young Peoples Blood To Prolong His Life. But Of Course He Would.

PayPal founder. Trump convention delegate. Gawker Media bankrupter. Gay man. Venture capitalist. User of young people's blood to prolong his own life? Narcissism and money can make a very complicated combination. JL

Maya Kosoff reports in Vanity Fair:

The venture-capitalist explains that he’s interested in parabiosis, which includes the practice of getting transfusions of blood from a younger person, as a means of improving health and potentially reversing aging. Gawker has reported that it received a tip in June claiming that Thiel “spends $40,000 per quarter to get an infusion of blood from an 18-year-old based on research conducted at Stanford on extending the lives of mice."

Trump delegate and Gawker bankrupter Peter Thiel is no stranger to the idea of increasing his lifespan through science. “I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual,” he wrote in libertarian journal Cato Unbound seven years ago. On Bloomberg TV in 2014, Thiel explained that he was taking human-growth hormone pills as part of his plan to live 120 years. “It helps maintain muscle mass, so you’re much less likely to get bone injuries, arthritis,” he said.
Given Thiel’s obsession with warding off death, it comes as no surprise that the Silicon Valley billionaire is interested in at least one radical way of doing it: injecting himself with a young person’s blood. Jeff Bercovici of Inc. magazine published part of a year-old interview with Thiel, in which the venture-capitalist explains that he’s interested in parabiosis, which includes the practice of getting transfusions of blood from a younger person, as a means of improving health and potentially reversing aging. “I'm looking into parabiosis stuff, which I think is really interesting. This is where they did the young blood into older mice and they found that had a massive rejuvenating effect,” he said. “And so that’s . . . that is one that . . . again, it’s one of these very odd things where people had done these studies in the 1950s and then it got dropped altogether. I think there are a lot of these things that have been strangely under-explored.”
It’s unclear whether the 48-year-old entrepreneur is currently receiving parabiosis treatments. Bercovici reports that a Thiel Capital employee—actually, the “Personal Health Director to Peter Thiel,” according to his LinkedIn page—previously expressed interest in the technique to Jesse Karmazin, the founder of Ambrosia LLC, a company that has been looking for volunteers over the age of 35 to receive blood transfusions from individuals under the age of 25. Bercovici notes that Silicon Valley is abound with rumors of wealthy tech elites experimenting with parabiosis, and Gawker has reported that it received a tip in June claiming that Thiel “spends $40,000 per quarter to get an infusion of blood from an 18-year-old based on research conducted at Stanford on extending the lives of mice.” When Thiel was interviewed by Bercovici last year, he told the reporter that he hadn’t “quite, quite, quite started yet.” A spokesman for Thiel Capital told Inc. that nothing had changed since then.
Thiel himself has invested in a number of biotech start-ups, including companies like Stemcentrx, which seeks to use stem-cell technology to cure cancer, and he’s

he’s given $6 million to biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey’s Sens Foundation, which seeks to extend human lifespans. Thiel’s Breakout Labs funds a number of biotech start-ups. He’s also signed up with cryogenics company Alcor to be deep-frozen when (or if, a more optimistic death-cheating evangelist would say) he dies. There are three ways you can approach death, Thiel has said. “You can accept it, you can deny it, or you can fight it. I think our society is dominated by people who are into denial or acceptance, and I prefer to fight it.”