Speaker 1: Hey, Matt, have you ever felt, you know, just like
Speaker 1: weirdly tired always? You know, it's just always vibe.
Speaker 2: That's that's my standard feeling throughout the day.
Speaker 1: So, uh, I guess it's cool to have feel It's
Speaker 1: uh not til long ago. In a previous Classic episode,
Speaker 1: you pointed out that the phrase UAP has been around
Speaker 1: for five years now, and it made me think a
Speaker 1: little bit about age. What if there was a way
Speaker 1: to mitigate the inevitable uh grind of time. What if
Speaker 1: you could just take some blood from someone younger and
Speaker 1: you know, get rid of that tired feeling.
Speaker 2: Okay, Illuminati, I'm out of here, and.
Speaker 1: We hope that you are in for today's classic episode,
Speaker 1: The Modern Vampire. It's a true story. Uh. There have
Speaker 1: been extensive experiments in the modern day with plasma transfusion
Speaker 1: in a way that is ethically fraught and riddled with conspiracy.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.
Speaker 1: Name is Ben. Our compatriot nol is traveling at the moment,
Speaker 1: but we'll be back soon. We are joined with our
Speaker 1: super producer Paul Deckin. Most importantly, you are you, and
Speaker 1: that makes this stuff they don't want you to know? Matt,
Speaker 1: I propose we begin this episode with a little bit
Speaker 1: of a peak behind the curtain.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: So for the past gosh to two months almost, Matt
Speaker 1: and Noel and I have been kicking the can down
Speaker 1: the road regarding a very interesting email we receive about
Speaker 1: the Georgia guidestones. And every episode we have told each
Speaker 1: other we're going to read this in a shout out
Speaker 1: corner at the end of the show. And we've just been,
Speaker 1: you know, so much like a dog chasing a ball
Speaker 1: that by the time we get to the end of
Speaker 1: an episode, we've we've found that we don't have room
Speaker 1: to squeeze this in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but we're gonna instead of squeezing it in, we're
Speaker 2: just going to place it in front of you, right
Speaker 2: here in front of this podcast.
Speaker 1: So let's consider this an oddly placed shout out corner.
Speaker 2: The message says, greetings, Ben, Matt Knowle. This email is
Speaker 2: in regards to the stuff they Don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Podcast episode titled Who built the Georgia Guidestones, published eighteenth
Speaker 2: of November twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: We got there, We got to it eventually, We.
Speaker 2: Did it, says. Firstly, there were several pieces of information
Speaker 2: left out from your discussions on the topic, and this
Speaker 2: is a much longer email than we are going to
Speaker 2: read now. We are reading one piece of it that
Speaker 2: was most compelling to us, It says. The identity of
Speaker 2: RC Christian has since been revealed to be that of
Speaker 2: one Herbert Hinney Hnie Kirsten, a doctor from Fort Dodge, Iowa.
Speaker 2: This was first reported in the documentary film Dark Clouds
Speaker 2: Over Elberton by Chris Pinto. It is also reported that
Speaker 2: Kirsten was a supporter of David Duke, the former Grand
Speaker 2: Wizard of the Knights of the klu Klux Klan and
Speaker 2: proponent of eugenics. He was apparently aided by a friend
Speaker 2: of his, Robert Merriman, who helped publish the Common Sense
Speaker 2: Renewed book, the one that we mentioned in that episode,
Speaker 2: A Whole Bunch, and we actually have a copy of
Speaker 2: and it was written this is written to us by
Speaker 2: quote a guide to the.
Speaker 1: End, and we thought this was we thought this was
Speaker 1: fantastic well, at least it's a fantastic lead on the
Speaker 1: true identity of RC Christian. At this point, it has
Speaker 1: not been conclusively proven. Not everybody agrees that this is
Speaker 1: indeed Herbert Hinney Kirsten or Herbert Heinie Kirsten. But I
Speaker 1: think it's Hinny. I think it's Anny, Matt. This has
Speaker 1: not been conclusively proven in a way that everybody accepts.
Speaker 1: But this is one of the most recent arguments for
Speaker 1: the true identity of RC Christian. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: learn more, please check out the documentary Dark Clouds over Elberton,
Speaker 1: as well as the fantastic documentary that Matt put together.
Speaker 2: Now that we put together.
Speaker 1: Okay, but it's available on Amazon for free, just search
Speaker 1: for us. Yeah, Echeton Secret is out the name of
Speaker 1: our take on it, and maybe one day we'll just
Speaker 1: get it on YouTube as well. Agreed, we should do that,
Speaker 1: And this concludes our oddly place onto the show. Let's
Speaker 1: get let's get creepy. Let's get creepy immediately. Okay, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's a creepy voice, Matt. We've all heard myths about vampires, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: some form of a vampire legend exists on every continent,
Speaker 1: with the possible exception of Antarctica. There's the typical Dracula
Speaker 1: type vampire that's possibly the most familiar type of vampire
Speaker 1: here in the West, but there are other creatures as well,
Speaker 1: like the swan and the Philippines, or the lamia in
Speaker 1: Grecian folklore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bloodsuckers, beings that exist on the sanguine delights of
Speaker 2: other beings.
Speaker 1: That's a great that's a great description.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And it's really tough to trace the beginnings
Speaker 2: of this myth of what a vampire is, what it
Speaker 2: was before it became a capital v vampire that's in
Speaker 2: movies and pop culture, and from demons to Dracula, the
Speaker 2: creation of the modern vampire myth. The author Matthew Beresford notes, quote,
Speaker 2: there are clear foundations for the vampire and the ancient world,
Speaker 2: and it is impossible to prove when the myth first arose.
Speaker 2: There are suggestions that the vampire was born out of
Speaker 2: sorcery and ancient Egypt, a demon summoned into this world
Speaker 2: from some other.
Speaker 1: Right other being, some other playing some other dimension. In
Speaker 1: earlier episodes, we explored the possible origins of the vampire myth,
Speaker 1: by which we mean the possible real world seeds of
Speaker 1: truth that later grew into this agglomeration of folklore. And
Speaker 1: this includes proposed causes such as premature burial, which was
Speaker 1: horrifically common for a very very long time, also conditions
Speaker 1: medical conditions like porphyria or dementia and so on. And
Speaker 1: you can again find those episodes, both video and audio
Speaker 1: at our website. Stuff they don't want you to know
Speaker 1: dot com on what you're using to listen to this,
Speaker 1: oh yes, or on whatever feed you prefer. We should
Speaker 1: be out there and tell us if you can't find
Speaker 1: us on your preferred feed. But today we are asking
Speaker 1: a more topical question. We're not asking whether something like
Speaker 1: a vampire ever existed, or even if something like a
Speaker 1: vampire currently exists. Instead, we're asking whether it is possible
Speaker 1: to create vampires or something like them. Not characters in fiction,
Speaker 1: friends and neighbors and you're monsters on the silver screen.
Speaker 1: We're talking about real life vampires.
Speaker 2: Again, someone something that exists on the blood of others.
Speaker 2: And this concept of vampirism has become so prevalent in
Speaker 2: our worlds nowadays it's been used as an insult. You
Speaker 2: vampire can get out in the light, you vampire or
Speaker 2: a piece of a probrium to heap him upon all
Speaker 2: kinds of let's say, all two human rosters, right, yeah, you'll.
Speaker 1: Hear a probrium is a word for reproacher or insult.
Speaker 1: You'll hear this used to refer to certain serial killers
Speaker 1: in the past, you know, the vampire of so and so.
Speaker 1: And you'll also, of course hear it used to describe
Speaker 1: a lot of ancient aristocrats. Of course. The legendary Lad
Speaker 1: Tepesh is often cited as the inspiration for ram Stoker's Dracula,
Speaker 1: and he was a prince of a place called Wallachia
Speaker 1: three different times between fourteen forty eight and his death.
Speaker 1: He was the second son of someone named Vlad Dracoul
Speaker 1: or Vlad the Dragon, who was the ruler of Wallachia
Speaker 1: in fourteen thirty six. Lewis father was known as Dracula
Speaker 1: the Dragon. He flat Tepesh, Lad the Third, was the
Speaker 1: more notorious of the two. He was known as the
Speaker 1: Impaler for his habit of impaling his enemies, rivals, or
Speaker 1: just people who caught him on the wrong side of
Speaker 1: bed in the morning. He'd have these large wooden stakes
Speaker 1: erected and then graphic warning. Here he would have their
Speaker 1: bodies forced on the stakes, the stakes going through their
Speaker 1: anuses and impaling him that way. He was also infamous
Speaker 1: for casually dining as he watched these people die a
Speaker 1: very slow, grisly painful death.
Speaker 2: So in a way he did get by through the
Speaker 2: blood of others, in a very dark way.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, and in a experiential rather than a physiological
Speaker 1: way perhaps, which is I don't know, that's a dangerous
Speaker 1: comparison because if we engage in that comparison, we get
Speaker 1: to slippery slope where we could argue that all warlords
Speaker 1: or even politicians who are in charge of militaries subsist
Speaker 1: to a degree on the blood of others.
Speaker 2: I don't think that slope is that slippery.
Speaker 1: I think we might already have slipped. There's another example,
Speaker 1: which is Elizabeth Bathri or Erzbett Bathory, the noble woman
Speaker 1: who is based in what is now known as Slovakia.
Speaker 1: In the sixteen hundred, she was arrested and accused of
Speaker 1: numerous macab crimes. We have just a few examples of
Speaker 1: those alleged crimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she would keep her well. Allegedly, she would keep
Speaker 2: her servants chained up every night, so their hands were
Speaker 2: just so tightly bound that they would turn blue and
Speaker 2: sometimes even squirt blood out of them. She used to
Speaker 2: beat her servants to the point that there was so
Speaker 2: much blood all over the place, on the walls, on
Speaker 2: the beds, they had to use ashes and cinders to
Speaker 2: soak it all up and scrub it all away. She
Speaker 2: even burned her sir with metal sticks allegedly red hot
Speaker 2: keys and coins. She ironed the soles of their feet
Speaker 2: and even stuck burning rods into their vaginas.
Speaker 1: Yes, and she didn't stop there with stabbing. She also
Speaker 1: pricked them in their mouths and fingernails with needles, cut
Speaker 1: their hands, lips and noses, shoes, knives, needles, candles, occasionally
Speaker 1: her own teeth to lacerate the genitals of servants, stitch
Speaker 1: their lips and tongues together, made them sit on stinging nettles,
Speaker 1: bathe with the nettles, force them to cook and eat
Speaker 1: their own flesh, or make sausages from it and serve
Speaker 1: it to the guests. She was accused of practicing dark magic,
Speaker 1: baking magical poisonous cakes in order to kill rival politicians
Speaker 1: such as George Thurzo, who was later one of the
Speaker 1: guys who arrested her, was also she would cast magic
Speaker 1: spells to summon clouds filled with angry cats.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: Most famously the most infamously, rather, she was believed to
Speaker 1: have bled young servant girls dry, and after exsanguinating their
Speaker 1: bodies or training all the blood from them, bathing in
Speaker 1: that blood.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's probably where you've most likely heard a
Speaker 2: lot of these stories where she is the she's a
Speaker 2: whole other archetype in a way of things beyond a vampire,
Speaker 2: just having to do with bathing in the blood.
Speaker 1: Right, and this was characterized as part of a right
Speaker 1: or a ritual that would lengthen her lifespan and rejuvenate
Speaker 1: her history has to a degree exonerated Bathory of some
Speaker 1: of these accusations. At the time of the trial, over
Speaker 1: three hundred individuals testified against her for one thing or another,
Speaker 1: and her servants were put to Four of her servants
Speaker 1: were put to gruesome ends, but given the influence that
Speaker 1: she had in society at the time, she was not killed.
Speaker 1: She was immured I M m U r ed, which
Speaker 1: means they grounded her for the rest of her life. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they put her in a windowless room, she was supplied
Speaker 1: with food and water, and she was left there to die.
Speaker 1: But it looks like it looks like there's some problems
Speaker 1: with the claims. Most immediately, the whole idea of bathing
Speaker 1: in virgin blood. First, that idea came about centuries after
Speaker 1: her death. Someone added that to the story to the
Speaker 1: campfire tail.
Speaker 2: That's an issue.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that she didn't do horrible things, just
Speaker 1: means that came along much later. Also, from a scientific perspective,
Speaker 1: it's most likely impossible for her to quote bathe and
Speaker 1: virgin blood due to coagulation. How would you keep the
Speaker 1: blood liquid long enough were there to be an entire
Speaker 1: tub of it?
Speaker 2: Interesting, I guess it would be in the how you
Speaker 2: got the blood.
Speaker 1: Out right right and ambient temperature and so on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so god, yeah, we're getting grizzly pretty quickly in this one.
Speaker 1: So it's also possible that Bathory was targeted by the
Speaker 1: male dominated establishment at the time because vilification or demonization
Speaker 1: of women was a common way of removing them from
Speaker 1: the political chessboard. This happened in witch hunts, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of times. One thing that escapes. Historical explanations
Speaker 1: of the witch hunt phenomenon is the following in certain
Speaker 1: practices in the inquisition, in certain non inquisition which hunts
Speaker 1: the accuser, the person who put the witch to trial,
Speaker 1: who is almost always convicted in one way or the other,
Speaker 1: they would receive the wealth of the estate, so they
Speaker 1: were not objective in their accusations. They were incentivized or incented,
Speaker 1: whichever word you prefer, to arrive at a guilty verdict.
Speaker 1: So it's quite possible that this was a political hit.
Speaker 1: But we say all this because whether or not the
Speaker 1: legend is whether or not the legend is true, it
Speaker 1: is something iconic. It is an image that is stayed
Speaker 1: with us, you me, probably everyone you know has heard
Speaker 1: of these grizzly stories about the elites of the world
Speaker 1: subsisting on the blood of the innocent and typically the oppressed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean metaphorically, there's no bones about it. It
Speaker 2: kind of is true metaphorically.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And so the question literally, then our conclusion becomes,
Speaker 1: that's it, right. Vampirism is largely a myth.
Speaker 2: And allegory of sorts.
Speaker 1: Right, Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: There may be more to this whole blood and vampirism
Speaker 2: thing than we had initially believed, or at least some
Speaker 2: aspect of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for decades, it turns out, scientists have been experimenting
Speaker 1: with the idea of transfusing blood from younger organisms to
Speaker 1: older organisms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what happens when we put this young blood in here?
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, that's a part of the evil.
Speaker 2: Laugh.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean it sounds sinister.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 1: It's It's true. And you have to wonder sometimes how
Speaker 1: much of this research starts from an informed place, and
Speaker 1: how much of it starts with someone going, you know
Speaker 1: what I wonder? I wonder hear me out, guys. I
Speaker 1: have this picture of I have this picture of you
Speaker 1: and Paul and Matt Nol and I listeners. I have
Speaker 1: this picture of us all sitting around the table and saying,
Speaker 1: what will our next experiment be? And then someone like
Speaker 1: you just did, Matt goes, Uh, guys, hear me out.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of mice. Yeah, and that's where
Speaker 1: they started. Uh. They scientists began transfusing blood from young
Speaker 1: mice into the bodies of old mice. And as it
Speaker 1: turned out, this was not just some weird thing for
Speaker 1: math scientists to do.
Speaker 2: For kicks.
Speaker 1: It all goes back to something called parabiosis.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is one hundred and fifty year old surgical
Speaker 2: technique that unites the vasculature of the veins and the arteries,
Speaker 2: the blood systems essentially of two living animals. And the
Speaker 2: word actually comes from the Greek para, meaning alongside in
Speaker 2: bios life. So you have two organisms that you've essentially
Speaker 2: created conjoined twins out.
Speaker 1: Of Yeah, yeah, exactly. We're animals that share a placenta
Speaker 1: in a womb. This, Yeah, parabiosis does occur in nature,
Speaker 1: as with the example that Matt's sided can join twins
Speaker 1: would probably be the most well known example. But we
Speaker 1: we be in the human species, learned that we could
Speaker 1: do this artificially. And here's the huge plot twist, not
Speaker 1: always automatically killing the living things we stitched together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: human centipede staff, Well, not quite right, right, Sorry, you're right,
Speaker 1: you're right, Matt, they're.
Speaker 2: Not that's a digestive system or.
Speaker 1: Right, that's exactly right. No, this would just be circulatory
Speaker 1: system and a lot less gross, but still gross. In
Speaker 1: the lab, you see, parabiosis gives experts a tremendously rare
Speaker 1: opportunity to test what factors in the blood in the
Speaker 1: circulatory system of one animal do when they enter another animal.
Speaker 2: A question I've always asked myself.
Speaker 1: I know, sometimes out loud during meetings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what happens if my blood was your blood and
Speaker 2: your blood was my blood?
Speaker 1: You know people can hear you when you do that, right?
Speaker 2: Oh? Really?
Speaker 1: Yes? Oh yes, that's why Noel's not here for this episode.
Speaker 1: I think maybe you should just get a creative outlet,
Speaker 1: like write poetry or essays.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to pick up a guitar, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get into some dark metal. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: could create dark power ballads about these experiments. Because experiments
Speaker 1: with these rodent pairs, whether rats or mice or what
Speaker 1: have you, have led to immensely important breakthroughs in indo chronology,
Speaker 1: tumor biology, immunology, and so on. But here's a curious thing, Matt.
Speaker 1: Most of those discoveries occurred more than thirty five years ago.
Speaker 1: The technique, for some unknown reason, fell out of favor
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, and.
Speaker 2: That's so weird.
Speaker 1: Well, we did a lot of digging, and we still
Speaker 1: can't We still can't find out what happened in the seventies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think most of it is just the EWW factor.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1: In the past few years, however, a couple of laps
Speaker 1: relatively small number, have revived the practice of artificial parabiosis,
Speaker 1: especially in the field of age research or aging, because
Speaker 1: it turns out that by joining the circulatory system of
Speaker 1: an old mouse to that of a young mouse, scientists
Speaker 1: can produce some remarkable things, which already just sounds so
Speaker 1: problematic and spooky to me. But what do they find?
Speaker 2: Well in the hot brain muscles, in almost every other
Speaker 2: tissue examined, the blood of young mice seems to bring
Speaker 2: new life into aging organs, making own mice stronger, smarter,
Speaker 2: and healthier. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean even without the voice that's troubling.
Speaker 2: It does good things to the old mice.
Speaker 1: Right, and it even makes their fur shinier.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I'm sold now.
Speaker 1: Now, these labs have begun to identify the components in
Speaker 1: this quote unquote young blood that are responsible for these changes.
Speaker 1: Nice exact ample. A biochemist and gerontologist named Clive McKay,
Speaker 1: based in Cornell University up there in Mythica, New York,
Speaker 1: was the first individual to apply PERO biosis to the
Speaker 1: study of aging. In nineteen fifty six, he and his
Speaker 1: team joined sixty nine pairs of rats together in Pero biosies.
Speaker 1: They stitched them up together so that their circulatory systems
Speaker 1: were in contact, forming a larger circuit, and the linked
Speaker 1: rats included, you know, they all had those differing age ranges.
Speaker 1: So one pair was made up of a sixteen month
Speaker 1: old rat and a one point five month old rat.
Speaker 1: In human terms, that's the same thing as sowing a
Speaker 1: forty seven year old person to a five year old child.
Speaker 2: And here's the deal. When you attach a forty seven
Speaker 2: year old through the circulatory system to a five year
Speaker 2: old sometimes it always doesn't go well well from a
Speaker 2: psychology standpoint of the rats. So here's a quote from
Speaker 2: the authors who worked on this study. If two rats
Speaker 2: are not adjusted to each other, one will chew the
Speaker 2: head of the other until it is destroyed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a quotation from the author's description of their work.
Speaker 1: Of this was a pretty experiment because rats are highly
Speaker 1: intelligent animals, right, and obviously smart enough to know that
Speaker 1: something is not normal if they are stitched up to
Speaker 1: another individual, especially if they are not acclimated to that individual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you woke up and you were sewn to a stranger,
Speaker 1: you would have some questions, some concerns. You probably would
Speaker 1: not be chill about it. So they also found that
Speaker 1: there was a trumble bling phenomenon they couldn't explain at
Speaker 1: the time. Back in the fifties. Of the sixty nine
Speaker 1: rodents that they paired together, eleven pairs died from a
Speaker 1: mysterious condition they called parabiotic disease that occurred. This occurred
Speaker 1: about one to two weeks after the partners were joined,
Speaker 1: and it was probably a form of tissue rejection. You're
Speaker 1: one body going, what the heck is this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely well, because in this case you are transferring
Speaker 2: all of the blood. You're not taking out a component
Speaker 2: of the blood as we're going to see maybe in
Speaker 2: the future. Here as we're moving on, you're getting everything.
Speaker 1: Excellent point. This is not a transfusion. This is the
Speaker 1: This is compiling or mixtaping to separate circulatory systems.
Speaker 2: So, in McKay's first parabiotic aging experiment, after the old
Speaker 2: and young recks were joined from anywhere from nine months
Speaker 2: to eighteen months, they found in you know, the one
Speaker 2: positive thing that seemed to come out of this. The
Speaker 2: older animal's bones became similar in weight and density to
Speaker 2: the bones of the younger counterparts that they were attached to.
Speaker 2: So it did seem like there is something going on
Speaker 2: here in at least most in this case of the
Speaker 2: cases of the pairs, some kind of beneficial thing for
Speaker 2: the older rats, not necessarily for the younger rats. There's
Speaker 2: not really much of a benefit at all.
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't. It doesn't seem like there is, because
Speaker 1: it's not as if the young rats somehow gain the
Speaker 1: wisdom and experience, right. What seems to happen in the
Speaker 1: ideal case is that they enter into a type of
Speaker 1: symbiosis called commensalism. There are three types of symbiosis. Symbiosis
Speaker 1: just means a close relationship between two or more species, right.
Speaker 1: The three types are mutualism, where both both parties benefit
Speaker 1: or all parties benefit, parasitism where one benefits at the
Speaker 1: expense of the other, and commensalism, where one species benefits
Speaker 1: somehow and the other species is neither harmed nor helped. Arguably,
Speaker 1: this is on the line between commensalism and parasitism, because
Speaker 1: while the younger animal is not necessarily being directly harmed.
Speaker 1: Its life is going to be hindered. Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Attached to this forty seven year old mouse. It's like
Speaker 2: six months, well year old mouse. Your music is just
Speaker 2: really I don't understand it. I don't know why we're
Speaker 2: watching this on TV. Let's watch Soldies.
Speaker 1: So let's fast forward. Yeah, let's get through the seventies,
Speaker 1: where again this research mysteriously fell out of favor. A
Speaker 1: few years back, a team of researchers Amy Wager, Irena
Speaker 1: and Michael Convoy and Thomas Rando partnered up. They've vultroned
Speaker 1: up to take their separate areas of research in this
Speaker 1: field and combine them to investigate the phenomenon. Specifically, this
Speaker 1: group wanted to address a problem with the study of
Speaker 1: agent with gerontology as a whole. And here's where we
Speaker 1: are now. It seems as if aging itself is a
Speaker 1: body wide effect, right nor your body tends to break
Speaker 1: down sort of. At the same time, there are environmental
Speaker 1: things that can that can affect you. For instance, you
Speaker 1: will take more damage depending on how you treat yourself
Speaker 1: if you do if you are an athlete and you
Speaker 1: have a lot of repetitive exercises, right, then you may
Speaker 1: have concussions, or you may have joint problems that might
Speaker 1: not have appeared in the same way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even if you're just walking around all the time,
Speaker 2: your joints in your knees aren't going to be the
Speaker 2: same as perhaps the joints in your shoulder if you
Speaker 2: aren't very active with your shoulder. Agreed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, good point. And the problem is that they
Speaker 1: wanted to They wanted to see if they could determine
Speaker 1: what coordinates the aging process. In the words of Rando,
Speaker 1: why does everything in your body go to hell in
Speaker 1: a hand basket at once? Why does this affect multiple
Speaker 1: parts of the body simultaneously. So they tried these experiments again,
Speaker 1: and they took some lessons learned from the earlier experiments
Speaker 1: in the fifties, So they made sure the mice or
Speaker 1: the rodents knew each other before they sewed them together.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And Thomas Rando says that he did not expect the
Speaker 1: experiment to work, but it did within five weeks. He said,
Speaker 1: the young blood restored muscle and liver cells in the
Speaker 1: older mice, notably by causing aged stem cells to start
Speaker 1: dividing again. They also found that young blood resulted in
Speaker 1: enhanced growth of brain cells in old mice, although that
Speaker 1: work was left out of their two thousand and five
Speaker 1: paper that described the results. All in all, the results
Speaker 1: suggested that blood was the medium of transportation for whatever
Speaker 1: the mystery factor or factor was that coordinated aging in
Speaker 1: different tissues, which makes sense because blood is a very
Speaker 1: well traveled substance in the human body. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, the convoys uh Irena and Michael linked muscle
Speaker 1: rejuvenation to the activation of something called notch signaling, which
Speaker 1: promotes cell division, or, to be more technically accurate, it's
Speaker 1: the muscle rejuvenation is dependent upon the de activation of
Speaker 1: the transforming growth factor pathway. That's what blocks cell division.
Speaker 1: In twenty fourteen, the group identified one of the age
Speaker 1: defying factors circulating in the blood.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's oxytocin. It's a hormone is best known
Speaker 2: for its involvement in childbirth and bonding. We've discussed that
Speaker 2: several times in.
Speaker 1: Our how your Brain Betrays you when You're in love.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, I did not mean to sound that bit.
Speaker 2: Yes, and already a drug approved by the FDA, the
Speaker 2: Food and Drug Administration here in the United States. It's
Speaker 2: it's approved for inducing labor and pregnant women. You wow,
Speaker 2: I forget what it's called. Potocin. Potosin, I think is
Speaker 2: what it's called. Yes, my wife didn't have to use it. Huh.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. That's a good thing, right, you want the
Speaker 1: minimum amount of yeah.
Speaker 2: And chemicals going in during pregnancy. But it's used a
Speaker 2: lot of times to induce I don't want, I want
Speaker 2: to throw anyone under the bus here, but a lot
Speaker 2: of times used to induce a labor when staff is
Speaker 2: being changed out in a period, so that a new
Speaker 2: nurse or a new set of people coming in don't
Speaker 2: have to just pick up where the other whole crew left.
Speaker 1: Off, okay, because they might not have the background knowledge
Speaker 1: of the previous Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that's not officially what it's used for,
Speaker 2: but if you're in a tight spot and you need
Speaker 2: to get a baby out, it's also really.
Speaker 1: Helpful and oxytocin. It turns out the levels of this
Speaker 1: substance to climb with age and both men and women.
Speaker 1: And when oxytocin is injected into older mice over a
Speaker 1: systematic regimen or schedule, the hormone quickly within a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, regenerates muscles by activating muscle stem cells.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And Wagers was following up on this anti aging work
Speaker 1: at Harvard, where she started her own lab in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four. She recruited the help of experts in
Speaker 1: various organ systems to help her evaluate the specific impact
Speaker 1: of young blood on the respective tissues of the organs.
Speaker 1: We've got a couple of examples of her findings here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Then she worked with Robin Franklin, who was a
Speaker 2: neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge in the UK. They
Speaker 2: kind of discovered that young blood promotes the repairing of
Speaker 2: damaged spinal cords in older mice. So if you've got
Speaker 2: I mean, that's huge. Yeah, there are a lot of
Speaker 2: things that you could hopefully apply that to in humans.
Speaker 2: If you can work that out in mice.
Speaker 1: The implications of that are pretty astounding.
Speaker 2: It's the implication, it's the implication.
Speaker 1: There was another neuroscientist, Lee Rubin, with whom Wagers found
Speaker 1: that young blood sparks the formation of new neurons in
Speaker 1: the brain and old factory system again associate with smell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, huge, huge, if you can apply it and then
Speaker 2: with cardiologist Richard Lee at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston,
Speaker 2: mass she found that it reverses age related thickening of
Speaker 2: the walls of the heart. Again, you've got heart, you've
Speaker 2: got brain, you've got spinal cord. Huge improvements to the
Speaker 2: lives of older people, older mice in this case, right possibly.
Speaker 1: Now before before Matt and I begin to sound as
Speaker 1: if we are telethon infomercial people shilling a new cure
Speaker 1: to make your pet mouse live forever, must go to
Speaker 1: the immediate question, which is the following. If this works
Speaker 1: in mice, If these techniques work in mice, could we
Speaker 1: rejuvenate aging humans by feeding them the blood of younger,
Speaker 1: healthy humans. We'll tell you the answer, or at least
Speaker 1: as far as modern medicine is gone publicly after a
Speaker 1: word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: As you listen to this episode and as we sit
Speaker 2: in this room and record it, research is pushing all
Speaker 2: of us in this direction, and it's threatening to collide
Speaker 2: head on with what we understand about ethics and morality
Speaker 2: in human experimentation, something that we've been doing since humans
Speaker 2: could talk and move a scalpel around and or whatever
Speaker 2: other implement has been used in the past. We've been
Speaker 2: pushing these boundaries, and it seems like we're doing it again.
Speaker 1: One of the most immediate aspects to consider here is
Speaker 1: the power and influence of privately funded research or very
Speaker 1: financially or socially powerful individuals who are aging and ailing
Speaker 1: and interested and interested. Because one thing most people seem
Speaker 1: to have in common thanatologists find people who study deathfind
Speaker 1: is that no one wants to die.
Speaker 2: Nope, it's you know.
Speaker 1: People do at times, unfortunately and tragically take their own lives,
Speaker 1: but by and large, humans are hardwired to want to
Speaker 1: live for as long as possible, even in the worst
Speaker 1: of circumstances. That's why there are so many of us
Speaker 1: here today. For example, when a private firm based in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong learned of this research, they moved immediately to
Speaker 1: get in the game. It turns out they made this
Speaker 1: move because the family who owned this corporate dynasty had
Speaker 1: a prevalent history of Alzheimer's, and other private entities are
Speaker 1: attempting to get in the game. There's one you may
Speaker 1: have read about a few years back. Jesse Kremazen wants
Speaker 1: he wants to bring this idea, this young blood to
Speaker 1: the old transfusion treatment to the public with the creation
Speaker 1: of a company called Ambrosia. Ambrusia purports to rejuvenate the
Speaker 1: aging and well to do with injects of younger plasma.
Speaker 1: Plasma is the essentially the liquid component of blood and.
Speaker 2: The looks kind of yellow, right, it does.
Speaker 1: And the plasma is what's stored at blood banks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and it's it's the stuff that has all
Speaker 2: of the antibodies and all the really important stuff, all
Speaker 2: the good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all the all the all the important stuff. Plasma
Speaker 1: in this case is going to come from people aged
Speaker 1: sixteen to twenty five. Currently, Ambrosia has two locations, both
Speaker 1: of which I'm reading tea leaves about. But I am
Speaker 1: making so many assumptions about this. So one location is
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, Yeah, and one's in Tampa, Tampa. So
Speaker 1: here's what I'm wondering, And Matt, I bet you're wondering
Speaker 1: the same thing. And we want to know your opinion, folks.
Speaker 1: San Francisco kind of makes sense to me, home of
Speaker 1: like water bars.
Speaker 2: And oxygen bars and all. There we go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so maybe there's a maybe there's a tech guru
Speaker 1: aspect to this.
Speaker 2: Right, got to get that edge.
Speaker 1: However, and then in Tampa there's a what's the most
Speaker 1: polite way to.
Speaker 2: Say this, there's a ton of old people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right on exactly, a significant percentage of the population
Speaker 1: is retired.
Speaker 2: That's what I said, all right, I think you.
Speaker 1: I think you said it in a bit more evocative
Speaker 1: and dare I say accurate way than I did?
Speaker 2: It was concise.
Speaker 1: It was concise. It's important to note here in the
Speaker 1: case of Ambrosia that younger does not mean infants. We
Speaker 1: said they're sixteen to twenty five. Don't worry. No one
Speaker 1: is tossing toddlers into a juicer as far as we know.
Speaker 1: Bad image, but necessary. You're necessary for us to say that.
Speaker 1: Nor is this company at this point swing people together,
Speaker 1: or you know, practicing parabiosis on humans.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Instead, they're offering, as Matt said, straight up transfusions.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And if you want to get this done, you
Speaker 2: can potentially. I can't. I don't think in this lifetime.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll have to check with my accountant. Oh wait,
Speaker 2: I don't have an accountant. All right, Well, no, I
Speaker 2: can't do this. The pricing plans will enroll almost anybody
Speaker 2: over thirty five years of age. The fees, though, are
Speaker 2: totaling up to eight thousand dollars per person per I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: What you'd call it pop yeah, per transfusion, but right,
Speaker 1: And they say that is covering the expense of the research,
Speaker 1: covering the raw cost of retrieving, maintaining, transporting the plasma.
Speaker 1: And it makes you wonder what happens to people in
Speaker 1: those ten years between twenty five and thirty five. You're
Speaker 1: too young to receive the treatment quote unquote treatment, you're
Speaker 1: too old to donate. Just got to make it through
Speaker 1: that decade long wilderness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your blood is just in stasis too, I guess
Speaker 2: according to research, just not really getting better. It's not
Speaker 2: getting worse, just kind of hanging.
Speaker 1: And ambrosia currently has it has had a lot of press,
Speaker 1: and it obviously has a lot of people who believe
Speaker 1: in it enough to at least give it a try,
Speaker 1: but as quite a few critics. Critics are arguing that
Speaker 1: the perobiosis experiments conducted on mice don't offer very much
Speaker 1: insight into how a one time transfusion could affect a human.
Speaker 1: So Wagers from earlier said that in our studies, circulation
Speaker 1: between a young mouse and old mouse was maintained through
Speaker 1: this parobiosis for nearly four weeks, almost a month.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're doing this for an hour or so,
Speaker 2: a couple hours maybe, right, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Eight grand a pop. Additionally, ethicists are concerned that ambrosia
Speaker 1: is that because ambrosia is being financed by the participants,
Speaker 1: by the people who will receive these transfusions. I keep
Speaker 1: I want to do like an arch sinister voice every
Speaker 1: time I say young blood. Yeah, it's just such a
Speaker 1: sinister Gary Oldman is Dracula phrase.
Speaker 2: You know, you just have to do like a licking
Speaker 2: of your lips sound after you say it.
Speaker 1: That's all yield or yeah. But they're the ethical problem
Speaker 1: with this, or one of the ethical problems is that
Speaker 1: there are not straight up investors. So if we're talking
Speaker 1: about people who are desperate to mitigate the delatorious effects
Speaker 1: of aging, then they're going to have a very difficult
Speaker 1: time being objective about the results, especially when we in
Speaker 1: the idea that the placebo effect does have measurable and
Speaker 1: significant physiological impacts upon a human body.
Speaker 2: Right yep, man, Well, so let's see where we are
Speaker 2: at least as of December twenty sixteen. According to Ambrosia,
Speaker 2: they've infused twenty five people with young blood so up
Speaker 2: until December twenty sixteen. It is now into twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: so who knows, maybe that number has doubled. We don't
Speaker 2: have notes from Ambrosia, but I'm sure we will get
Speaker 2: them soon. So Carmezine claims that his participants are seeing
Speaker 2: miraculous results, which is something you have to do when
Speaker 2: you have a company that does something like this. Patient
Speaker 2: with chronic fatigue syndrome, for example, quote feels healthy for
Speaker 2: the first time and looks younger, which is nice. And
Speaker 2: you know, these kind of antidotes will help, you know,
Speaker 2: market the study at least and get more people involved
Speaker 2: so we get more data. That can't be a bad thing.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's not proof that the plasma infusions
Speaker 2: actually work, and that would would be patients you know,
Speaker 2: should believe these at all, at least go into it
Speaker 2: thinking maybe this will work.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that drug approval moves so slowly
Speaker 1: is that there well, aside from the endemic corruption in
Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical industry and the medical medtech industry, typically on paper,
Speaker 1: the reason why these things move so slowly is because
Speaker 1: they're very important. They're literally putting people's lives in danger potentially,
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of hoops to jump through,
Speaker 1: and there should be quite a few hoops to jump through.
Speaker 1: According to Jonathan Kimmelman, who is a bioethicist at McGill University,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of patient funded trials run by
Speaker 1: companies that use the trials as a way to sell
Speaker 1: products that would not be marketable because they'd have to
Speaker 1: be regulated by the FDA.
Speaker 2: Yes, and speaking of a recent study concluded in November
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. It was done at the Stanford University School
Speaker 2: of Medicine. It was a clinical trial looking at the safety, tolerability,
Speaker 2: and feasibility of administering infusions, just what we've been talking
Speaker 2: about with ambrosia love blood plasma from young donors to
Speaker 2: participants with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. Again, very similar
Speaker 2: thing that we're trying to treat here with young blood.
Speaker 2: Different study, which is a good thing because now you've
Speaker 2: got with multiple studies, if you're getting the same results,
Speaker 2: then you're getting closer to, you know, actually doing what
Speaker 2: a scientific experiment is supposed to do. This trial in particular,
Speaker 2: was created to test a hypothesis put forth by this person,
Speaker 2: Tony Weisskore. He is a doctor, he's a Stanford Professor
Speaker 2: of neurology, and he's also a scientist at the Veterans
Speaker 2: Affairs in Palo Alto anyway, in California. His research, he
Speaker 2: did research with mice as well, and again found that
Speaker 2: factors in the blood of young mice can rejuvenate the
Speaker 2: brain tissue and improve cognitive performance in old mice. You
Speaker 2: can even see a ted talk of him if you
Speaker 2: want to. But anyway, in this one, it's again a company,
Speaker 2: a private company that has at least a hand in
Speaker 2: getting this research done and having this clinical trial put on.
Speaker 2: It's called Alcahest and it quote holds intellectual property associated
Speaker 2: with the treatment regimen for this particular trial. And the
Speaker 2: Tony Weiss kay gentleman, who was not a part of
Speaker 2: this experiment at least according to Stanford, he is the
Speaker 2: co founder of this company and also the chair of
Speaker 2: its scientific advisory board. So again you've got private interest
Speaker 2: to carry out these kinds of trials to see if
Speaker 2: there's anything to this young blood transfusion stuff.
Speaker 1: Right, And we're all so seeing that a lot of
Speaker 1: these studies or trials conducted have relatively small sample sizes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in this one there were only eighteen human beings
Speaker 2: that were transfused.
Speaker 1: And this is the public state of affairs at the present. However,
Speaker 1: there are clear and present dangers with this sort of
Speaker 1: experimentation that go far above and way beyond something like
Speaker 1: investor ethics and bureaucratic concerns. As we said, a transfusion
Speaker 1: is not parabiosis. So at this point there's not a
Speaker 1: solid load of widely accepted evidence that indicates any major
Speaker 1: health benefits, and that leads critics of places like Ambrosia
Speaker 1: to claim they are only praying on the desperate. So far,
Speaker 1: we do not know if anyone is practicing human parabiosis.
Speaker 1: In the past, there were certain grisly experiments that you
Speaker 1: can hear about in little more depth in our Human
Speaker 1: Experimentation series. In the past, there were experiments that approached
Speaker 1: some stuff like this, But perhaps the most concise way
Speaker 1: to describe those experiments is to say that the people
Speaker 1: conducting the experiments were in no way concerned about the
Speaker 1: benefits or even the survival rate. The benefits to or
Speaker 1: the survival rate of their patients, in a better word,
Speaker 1: for their patients would have been victims, because we were
Speaker 1: talking about wartime experiments by people who were absolute lunatics.
Speaker 1: Were there someone or some organization currently experimenting with human
Speaker 1: parabiosis at this point, it would almost certainly be secret.
Speaker 1: It would be classified because it would be seven shades
Speaker 1: of illegal to do so if it's going on currently.
Speaker 1: We would not know the age of the participants either,
Speaker 1: which is another scary thing.
Speaker 2: If it was done legally, though, they would have to
Speaker 2: be over eighteen unless they had I guess permission from
Speaker 2: their parents.
Speaker 1: I don't know if parents could sign up for that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, legally, they would all have to be over
Speaker 1: eighteen for some kind of consent to for informed consent
Speaker 1: to occur within the US at least, yeah, legally legally, again,
Speaker 1: legally for that to happen. If someone is experimenting with
Speaker 1: human parabiosis, they're also running the risk of parabiosis disease,
Speaker 1: which we mentioned earlier from those experiments in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: and the chances. Here's where we get. We go on
Speaker 1: some disturbing breadcrumbs. You're ready, Okay, So, if we're experimenting,
Speaker 1: if our species experimenting with human parabiosis currently, then there's
Speaker 1: that risk.
Speaker 2: Was it?
Speaker 1: Eleven of the sixty nine rap pairs right experienced parabiosis disease.
Speaker 2: He just died after a little while fatal rejection.
Speaker 1: The chances of this disease occurring are greatly reduced when
Speaker 1: the participants are increasingly similar. For our purposes, when the
Speaker 1: participants are increasingly related. So, next breadcrumb, what would your
Speaker 1: closest relationship be for this experiment? What other individual would
Speaker 1: create the highest chance of success in an experiment with parabiosis? Well,
Speaker 1: one question. One might say a child, taking your own child.
Speaker 1: One might say a sibling, But we have another We
Speaker 1: have another field of technology that is moving at a
Speaker 1: rapid pace. Now, what's closer than a sibling, closer than
Speaker 1: a child, even closer than a fraternal twin?
Speaker 2: A clone?
Speaker 1: Spot on, Matt, A clone? Oh what? So imagine we've
Speaker 1: talked about this before with the possibility of growing organs, right,
Speaker 1: growing clones? Four spare organs? Would it be? Is there
Speaker 1: a possible future where there would be a clone grown
Speaker 1: to act as a filter for your blood that's younger
Speaker 1: than you, that is just kept somewhere and you just
Speaker 1: plug up to it.
Speaker 2: Maybe when you hit a certain age, you have a
Speaker 2: bunch of your genetic material put away in a vault somewhere,
Speaker 2: and then that's used to begin creating clones of you
Speaker 2: at another certain age, or maybe once you hit that age,
Speaker 2: like let's say eighteen or so, then you just continuously
Speaker 2: throughout the rest of your life, once you hit thirty five,
Speaker 2: use these clones to be attached to you for a
Speaker 2: little while.
Speaker 1: And there's so little published science on this. There are
Speaker 1: absolutely no long term studies, no longitudinal studies of the
Speaker 1: nature of this effect. Like, what if someone begins engaging
Speaker 1: in some sort of thing like this, let's say, for
Speaker 1: the sake of argument, actual parabiosis, right, and let's say
Speaker 1: for months every year or ever, Yeah, for month every
Speaker 1: year something, they're stitched next to some source of young blood.
Speaker 1: And what happens to that? What does their body look
Speaker 1: like physiologically when they are sixty five, when they are
Speaker 1: seventy five? You know, how long does this go? No
Speaker 1: one knows. No one knows because it's unless you're very careful.
Speaker 1: It's evil to do that kind of experimentation. Additionally, this
Speaker 1: is even weirder. This is not as scary, but it
Speaker 1: is weird. Evidence indicates that injecting human blood plasma into
Speaker 1: the bodies of elderly mice might have beneficial effects on
Speaker 1: the mice.
Speaker 2: Hold on, putting human plasma into a mouse helps the mouse.
Speaker 1: That's what it seems to say. There's an article about
Speaker 1: this in Nature magazine when we have a quote here.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, they say. Infusing this human plasma into the
Speaker 2: veins of elderly mice, they found improved the animal's ability
Speaker 2: to navigate mazes and to learn to avoid areas of
Speaker 2: their cages that deliver painful electrical shocks. When the researchers
Speaker 2: dissected the animal's brains, they found that the cells in
Speaker 2: the hippocampus, the region associated with learning and memory, expressed
Speaker 2: genes that cause neurons to form more connections in the brain.
Speaker 2: This didn't happen in mice treated with blood from older
Speaker 2: human donors. So only the young blood helps.
Speaker 1: Right, So plasma from older humans did not have much
Speaker 1: of an effect. Plasma from younger sources umbilical cords specifically,
Speaker 1: by the way, turns out to be top notch. What
Speaker 1: could go wrong? What could go wrong with this knowledge? Right? Oh? Gosh. Well,
Speaker 1: for now, it appears that any claims that young blood
Speaker 1: or plasma will extend human lifespan are false.
Speaker 2: Or at least we just don't have the data.
Speaker 1: Right, We don't know. The data is just not there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: an experiment to test such claims would take upwards of
Speaker 1: six years, first waiting for the mice to age, then
Speaker 1: for them to die naturally, then analyzing the data. If
Speaker 1: we had funding to do this, says Michael Conboy, I
Speaker 1: do it, but we don't. Still, he adds, after a
Speaker 1: moment of hesitation, I hope that someone somewhere is keep
Speaker 1: in mind he's just talking about mice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, mice, just mice, and just in the nicest
Speaker 2: of Michael Conboy. Yeah. So, currently it appears the best
Speaker 2: possible case we can hope for is the isolation of
Speaker 2: some specific proteins or other elements that are found in
Speaker 2: young blood. These special reasons that rejuvenation occurs, because this
Speaker 2: could lead to amazingly effective treatments for age related ailments.
Speaker 2: We're talking to Alzheimer's, dementia and so on, without requiring
Speaker 2: people to bathe in the blood of virgins or you know,
Speaker 2: suck on human numbilical cords.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. The hope would be that our species
Speaker 1: could isolate, let's say, a specific protein, and that specific
Speaker 1: protein could be marketed right and created in some different way.
Speaker 1: And of course this research is very expensive, very complicated.
Speaker 1: You'll hear a lot of people say that as the
Speaker 1: world or the owners of the world now seek to
Speaker 1: move away from an owner ship economy to a service economy,
Speaker 1: you'll hear people allege that quote unquote Big Pharma is
Speaker 1: not in the business of selling cures. They're in the
Speaker 1: business of selling scheduled treatments. So then the concern would be,
Speaker 1: you know, is it it's not a cure all that
Speaker 1: will help somebody's Alzheimer's, it's a pill that they have
Speaker 1: to pay for that they have to take once a day. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you've got a private company that's based on
Speaker 2: making profit off of something and growing that company to
Speaker 2: hopefully one day sell it or make more money, you
Speaker 2: don't usually want to cure something, right, You don't want
Speaker 2: to put yourself out of business.
Speaker 1: But then there are people on the other side who
Speaker 1: will say that private industry is the is a necessary
Speaker 1: factor for this kind of research. Absolutely, but still but
Speaker 1: still it does allow and this is not us being alarmist.
Speaker 1: It does allow for the possibility of a world in
Speaker 1: which the rich find yet another avenue for victimizing the poor.
Speaker 1: Imagine a planet's worth of real life Elizabeth Bathorys practicing
Speaker 1: non consensual parabiosis. Research is still underweight, and it's safe
Speaker 1: to say that we'll hear more about this in the
Speaker 1: near to mid future. But Matt and I want to
Speaker 1: know what you think. Where do you land on this
Speaker 1: research given that it can mitigate the effects of aging,
Speaker 1: but we should say not give people immortality so far
Speaker 1: as we know, is it worth pursuing and where do
Speaker 1: you see it headed?
Speaker 2: So in my opinion, I think you're going to see
Speaker 2: more of what the character that's kind of modeled after
Speaker 2: Peter Thiel on, Oh what is that what show? HBO
Speaker 2: show Silicon Valley, that character that he's just got a
Speaker 2: young guy that comes around his house a couple times
Speaker 2: a week and they just do a blood transfusion. I
Speaker 2: think that's just going to be a thing that's like
Speaker 2: how the way uber drivers have There are so many
Speaker 2: uber drivers in the world and it's just proliferated. I
Speaker 2: think there will just be that the transfusion person.
Speaker 1: A new aspect of the gig economy.
Speaker 2: I really think so. And it's just something you do
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays over at you know, Bill's house
Speaker 2: or whatever that guy is that lives in the mansion
Speaker 2: on the hill.
Speaker 1: I have no doubt that someone will go off the
Speaker 1: reservation and try this on their own, especially if they
Speaker 1: can afford a relatively unethical doctor to just participate in
Speaker 1: this kind of experimentation. But well, then the doctor could
Speaker 1: be ethical. It depends really how much they want to
Speaker 1: pay the Yeah group, how much work they want to
Speaker 1: put into it. But I'm I think it really depends
Speaker 1: on what data bears out here. If if there is,
Speaker 1: it turns out real tangible results and evidence, then it's
Speaker 1: Katie bar the door. We don't know where it stops,
Speaker 1: but if it is a way to bilk the frightened
Speaker 1: and the aging out of money in an attempt to
Speaker 1: I guess pay the ferrymen a couple of extra coins
Speaker 1: to stay on his side of the river sticks for
Speaker 1: a while. The people will throw money at it, of course.
Speaker 1: But here's the question that bugs me the most, Matt.
Speaker 2: How much are the donors of ambrosia getting paid.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 2: Because I mean, I'm in, you're in. Oh no, I'm
Speaker 2: never mind.
Speaker 1: Sorry man. Another question that bugs me is what happened
Speaker 1: to parabiosis research when it dropped out, when it fell
Speaker 1: out of favor. Why did it disappear from the mainstream
Speaker 1: radar for decades? Was it animal rights? Was it something else?
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear your opinion. That concludes our episode
Speaker 1: for today, but never fear, Matt, Noel, Paul and I
Speaker 1: will be back very soon in the meantime.
Speaker 2: And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
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