Who Wants To Live Forever

People of a certain age remember the opening dialogue to the 1974 television series, ‘The Six Million Dollar Man.’ “Harve Bennett: Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Oscar Goldman: We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster.” The video showed the process of ‘rebuilding’ the astronaut with technology that seems almost antiquated by today’s standards. Every kid wanted to be Steve Austin. So much so, that ‘The Bionic Woman’ was added two years later so that girls would have someone to emulate. Adults passed it off as a fun fantasy crime/drama, a welcome from inflation, the price of gas, and the threat of terrorism on airplanes.

Peter Thiel, the former CEO of PayPal and the billionaire some claim is attempting to run the world, was a seven-year-old boy growing up in Frankfurt, Germany when the US television show was introduced. It seems unlikely that Thiel was ever influenced by the show, but as he got older and richer, the concept of human enhancement began to appeal to him. He was hooked.

Thiel isn’t the only one in his friend group who is obsessed with the idea of living longer and having a better bod without actually having to earn it. Robert Kennedy, America’s new health secretary, is part of the group. So is Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, Bryan Johnson, a 47-year-old tech billionaire, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape (you do remember Netscape, don’t you?) and tech investor, are all involved at some point. Some are merely investors, taking a ‘just in case’ approach, but others, such as Johnson, are involved in both clinical studies and self-experiments in the hopes of improving both their bodies and other lifespans.

Wanting to live forever is one of those things that people have wanted for years. Mythology is full of stories about people who gained immortality and gods who lost it. To this day, the world’s major religions teach that if you follow their precepts, eternal life is yours all set up in a special place. We want it. We worship it. And we’ll do almost anything to get it.

When one has billions of dollars to spend, that list of ‘almost anything’ gets long and expensive.  A clinic on Roatán Island, off the coast of Honduras not only offers beautiful beaches and crystal clear water, but also a method to introduce new genes into the body using loops of bacterial DNA called plasmids. It has harnessed this technique to induce the body to produce more follistatin, a hormone that, among other functions, stimulates muscle growth. Super muscles for ‘super’ people at a super high price.

Honduras is the only place where one can get this treatment. Honduras is the only place one can get many of the treatments that are popular among the human enhancement group.  It is part of a special economic zone with less onerous regulation than the rest of Honduras. It has become known for allowing medical procedures that might not be permitted in other jurisdictions. The private firm that runs the city includes among its backers Altman, Thiel, and Andreessen. They love their little place in the islands and don’t mind that ‘treatment’ there costs an arm and a leg because it keeps out the riffraff like you and me.

What is almost humorous is that the drugs many of these guys are taking are common medicines generally used to treat other illnesses. The drug metformin, for instance, has been prescribed to diabetics for decades. In mice, at least, it seems to extend lifespans. Those results have not been confirmed in humans, but aspiring Methuselahs are taking it anyway. Just be aware before asking your doctor for a prescription that metformin causes diarrhea for many users and it does damage to the kidney over time. One needs additional medication to offset both.

Ritalin, prescribed to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and testosterone, the chief male sex hormone and a powerful anabolic steroid, are claimed to be nootropics, drugs that boost cognitive performance. Put them together and … one gets very focused on where they’re growing hair?

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, better known as NAD+, is vital for cellular metabolism. Not only is it supposedly a nootropic; it allegedly has anti-aging properties, too. Allegedly is an important word. None of this has been proven.

George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University, argues that humans are reaching the limits of improvements in physical and mental performance that can be achieved through diet and exercise. Further gains, he says, will require advanced technologies such as gene editing. There remains a high probability that the body could begin to break down if pushed too far. There is a limit to what a carbon-based lifeform can endure.

That still doesn’t mean that everyone doesn’t want to live longer than they might and have a better body than what they see in the mirror. After all, the market for supplements already shifts $ 485bn worth of pills every year, despite little evidence that many of them do much good. The global coffee market, you know that stuff we all drink to force our eyes open in the morning, has a value of USD 138.37 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 174.25 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.72%. Toss in those energy drinks that have USD 73.81 billion in value and are projected to reach USD 177.58 billion by 2031 with a CAGR of 8.3%, topping that of coffee. 

Consider the use of smart watches. One could be sitting on your wrist now. They measure your heart rate and oxygen levels without you having to do anything. Some measure blood pressure. Some have marginally effective EEGs. Almost all of them measure the number of steps you take and how much exercise you get during the day. All this is done in the name of living better, living healtier, and hopefully living longer.

While we’ve added seven years to the average life expectancy over the past 100 years, we’re not necessarily any healthier. A study released in February of this year found that the gap between lifespan and health span is growing. While the global lifespan increased by more than six years between 2000 and 2019, the health span only increased by five years, meaning one of those extra years was lived in poor health. Globally, the gap between lifespan and health span is over nine years.

The statistics in the U. are starker. In fact, the US has the most significant lifespan-health span gap of more than 12 years. This means that if the average American lives to age 77, health issues begin affecting their life by age 65.

This raises an interesting question. Do we really want to live healthier or do we just want to dominate the world by living longer?

Eugenics, by any other name, is still eugenics. The form of enhancement doesn’t matter as much as the why and the who. When we look around and see that all the people running around the clinic in Honduras are billionaires with connections to the current White House, we are obligated to ask what’s going on. Are these people truly interested in furthering the human race as a whole and bettering the world, or are they looking for a political foot up on the rest of us?

The core principle is that any enhancement should be a matter of individual choice. No one should be forced or coerced into undergoing enhancement, and individuals should have the right to refuse enhancements without facing discrimination or prejudice. If, at any point, the government starts saying that we all must subscribe to a given form of enhancement, then we’re into eugenics.

At the same time, enhancements should be accessible to all who desire them, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, gender, or other factors. Unequal access would exacerbate existing inequalities, creating a society where some are “enhanced” and others are left behind, leading to a form of de facto eugenics through social stratification. Affordable and widespread access is key.

Affordable and widespread is currently a problem. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has always focused on cures for ailments that we already know about. Even at their highest level of employment, the FDA has never had sufficient reason nor the staffing to look at various human enhancement options. Sure, they regulate men’s ED medications and the various Botox fillers and breast enhancements, but that’s about as close as the FDA gets to messing with enhancements, especially anything that doesn’t already have a long history of clinical tests behind it.

Kennedy, for his part, is happy to break with medical orthodoxy and has personally embraced some supposed forms of enhancement. He has complained in the past that the FDA is suppressing research into stem-cell therapies. The President has nominated Jim O’Neill, a long-term lieutenant of Mr Thiel and a longevity enthusiast, as one of Mr Kennedy’s deputies. He, too, has criticised the FDA as unduly cautious in licensing experimental treatments.

But the FDA is one of many agencies that has seen its staffing slashed in the wave of recent cuts that has spread across all federal agencies. This can have little effect other than to make the process of approving any medication or supplemental health program even slower. Without approval, most people are going to look skeptically at anything that is only embraced by a bunch of rich white guys trying to get out of dying like the rest of us.

The primary goal of enhancement should be to improve the well-being of the individual, not to create a “better” type of human according to some arbitrary standard (as eugenics attempts to do). This includes physical, cognitive, and emotional well-being. Ideally, enhancements should be reversible, allowing individuals to change their minds or adapt to unforeseen circumstances. This is particularly important for enhancements with significant long-term implications. What might start off as a good idea could have detrimental qualities long term.

If enhancements are expensive or limited in availability, they could create a new form of inequality, exacerbating existing social divisions. Will enhanced individuals be treated differently? Will they have different rights or responsibilities? Billionaires already enjoy being treated differently by the extremity of their wealth. Enhancements could lead them to falsely assert themselves as deities.

Some argue that enhancement could undermine human authenticity or create a sense of artificiality. How much is too much? Current brain-computer interfaces (BCI) such as one made by Flow Neuroscience, uses electrodes attached to the scalp to send a small electrical charge to specific areas of the brain. It is being tested by Britain’s National Health Service to treat depression. Other startups hope to tackle different neurological or psychological disorders in a similar way. That all sounds reasonable. However…

In addition to treating conventional ailments, wearable BCIs, too, are intended to enhance. Some devices promise to help users become calmer, more focused and remember more. Another claims to “elevate your performance” by increasing alertness. There are hopes that BCIs of this sort could detect distraction or fatigue and thus improve workers’ performance. That could essentially turn people into a form of robot that never needs to take a break, or at least not as many for as long.

 In China, where multiple trials are under way involving monkeys and humans. Chinese scientists recently claimed to have developed the world’s first non-invasive two-way BCI, allowing a drone and human pilot to communicate with one another. The government has also issued various regulations to hasten the adoption of BCIs. Given the push toward drone technology among the world’s major powers, this could give China an important advantage. At the same time, the human pilots in charge of drones already have an exceptionally high suicide rate. Having one’s brain directly interacting with the drone could potentially make that problem worse.

There is great divide that we would do well to hold in deep suspicion. Aron D’Souza, the head of the Enhanced Games, thinks America’s new leadership [aka Punk & Co.] will unleash “a technological revolution”. “There’s big moves in play,” he says. “The FDA is a great organisation, but ultimately, there are many things and compounds outside of the purview of the current rules, because it’s not designed for this rule set.” He’s hoping that Kennedy et. al. will loosen the rules on things such as the use of anabolic steriods.

Anabolic steroids? Are we really back to that? There’s good reason why every sports organization in the world has banned their use. Although they might help build muscle, steroids can have very serious side effects. Using them for a long time can harm the reproductive system. In males, steroids can lead to impotence, reduced sperm production in the testicles, and even smaller testicle size. Here are some of the most common side effects of using anabolic steroids:

• Severe acne.
• A higher risk of swollen or torn cords in the body called tendons, which attach muscle to bone.
• Liver tumors, or other changes to the liver.
• Higher levels of the “bad” cholesterol, called low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol.
• Lower levels of the “good” cholesterol, called high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol.
• High blood pressure.
• Problems with the heart and blood flow.
• Issues with anger or violence.
• Mental health conditions, such as depression.
• A need for anabolic steroids that can’t be controlled.
• Diseases, such as HIV or hepatitis, if using needles to give shots of the drugs.

That doesn’t sound like such a good enhancement now, does it? As Kennedy continues to dismantle the Health and Human Services agencies, who are specifically designed to keep our safety in mind, this is the type of nonsense that could replace conventional medicine in the near future. Take more vitamins. Do more drugs.

The days of ‘just say no’ to drugs is gone.

Human enhancement has the potential to greatly improve human lives, but it also carries significant risks. By adhering to the principles of individual autonomy, equity, safety, and social justice, and by firmly rejecting any hint of eugenics, we can strive to harness the benefits of enhancement while avoiding its potential harms. The challenge is to create a future where enhancement is a tool for individual flourishing, not for social control or the creation of an artificial hierarchy.

The world of science fiction has already explored the downside to living forever: the constant grief of outliving loved ones, the potential for loneliness and boredom, and the possibility of experiencing a world drastically different from what you knew, leading to displacement and a sense of meaninglessness. Still, the billionaires with an agenda for ruling the world still keep taking their pills and their shots and their special Honduran treatments.

No one particularly likes to think about dying. No one enjoys thinking about living a life where perhaps they’re bedridden and unable to do the things they enjoy. Living forever, or even living for unreasonably longer periods, isn’t the party many think it is.

Beware. Drink your vitamin-enhanced juice and party on.