The Immortality Market and the Men Who Fear Death

The rich want to cheat aging

The Bufo alvarius toad, which lives in the south-western United States, produces a substance from which the world’s most powerful psychedelic is obtained. The vast majority of enthusiasts of such “boosters” take them in order to “take off” and “explore” unknown corners of their own minds. Bryan Johnson, a 48-year-old multimillionaire from California, has different plans for this substance. The eccentric wealthy man recently announced that he intends to take it in order to achieve… eternal life.

How to live longer when you have millions of dollars

Interestingly, this would not be Johnson’s most controversial “treatment.” That title would have to go to his intravenous injections of blood plasma taken from his then 17-year-old son, which some have called outright vampirism. His experiments have also included psilocybin mushrooms. Above all, however, Johnson relies on all kinds of food preparations — allegedly specially purified — which he measures down to the gram, and on his own supplements, which he takes by the bagful.

The body as a private laboratory

Johnson proudly shows the crowds of journalists who visit him how he has turned his villa into a genuine “longevity laboratory.” Special filters ensure that crystal-clear air reaches the house. Everywhere one looks, there are more or less strange-looking devices meant to serve rejuvenation treatments. The treatments continue at night too. Johnson is obsessed with almost programmed sleep under ideal conditions, which is supposed to make his body regenerate in the best possible way.

Biological age under control

This wealthy man chasing eternal life has set himself a clear, though practically impossible, goal: for researchers to determine that his body, biologically speaking, does not differ from that of an 18-year-old. Johnson made his fortune in the world of new technologies. Now, however, he is trying to build a supplement business empire that will supply other enthusiasts like him. The slogan of his company is simply: “Don’t die.”

Life extension has become a business

This multimillionaire is an extreme example of a man chasing “eternal” life, but in recent years we have seen a real surge of research and business initiatives aimed at radically extending human life. The richest Americans are investing enormous sums in this new sector. Among them are Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon; Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal alongside Elon Musk; and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

Their investments and announcements inevitably bring to mind science-fiction films about the wealthy pursuing, at any cost, if not immortality, then extremely long life. In other words, something that would inevitably have to be limited to a small group of ultra-rich chosen ones, able to pay for treatments and procedures beyond the reach of “ordinary” people. All of it is meant to answer 1 question: how to live longer.

Billions for a little more time

This approach also reveals ordinary narcissism, a belief in one’s own omnipotence and contempt for the reality that remains the common bread of humanity: death will catch everyone. Peter Thiel, like Johnson, has shown interest in plasma transfusions that would supposedly act as a “youth injection.” He has also announced that, if he fails to achieve eternal life after all, he wants to be frozen after death. So-called cryonics is a separate chapter in this strange-sounding story. Its proponents argue that properly frozen bodies may one day be revived and cured of the diseases that killed them.

Research into longevity is accelerating

Thiel has allocated large sums to the development of the longevity research sector, which is flourishing in Silicon Valley. And he has been consistent about this for years. Back in 2012, in an interview with Business Insider, he said:

There are all these people who say that death is natural, that it’s just part of life. I think that nothing could be further from the truth.

Thiel has invested, among other things, in the Methuselah Foundation, a biomedical research institution that wants, by 2030, to make 90-year-olds the new… 50-year-olds.

How to slow cellular aging

The New York Times looked closely at this subject, devoting a major article to it at the end of April. According to the New York daily, Sam Altman — who himself privately takes a diabetes drug in an attempt to fight aging, though researchers remain sceptical — invested as much as 180 million dollars in Retro Biosciences, a Silicon Valley biotech company conducting research into slowing, and potentially reversing, the aging process. According to The New York Times, Jeff Bezos is one of the main founders of Alto Labs, a company that aims to extend human life through stem-cell therapies.

Dinner with an age test

The sector has developed so much that lavish conferences are now organised where researchers, enthusiasts and investors of various kinds can meet and discuss the prospects for radically extending human life.

As early as 2022, the first Longevity Investors Conference was held in Gstaad, Switzerland. The ticket price? 4.5 thousand dollars. Naturally, the event began with a performance of Queen’s immortal hit, “Who Wants to Live Forever.” Since then, it has become a recurring event.

Pills, measurements and investors

Jessica Hamzelou of MIT Technology Review attended the event and wrote an interesting “review” of the meeting for the magazine.

Over the course of the two-day event, scientists and biotech company founders tried in various ways to present ideas for extending life in good health. And most of them were trying to win the favour of deep-pocketed investors,

– Hamzelou wrote in her article.

She was particularly intrigued by the scientists working on human rejuvenation who tried to convince other participants of their ideas by sweating heavily on various fitness machines, while attempting to prove how dramatically their physical performance had improved.

Many of those at the conference were taking bags of pills every day — all in the hope of extending their healthy lifespan,

– Hamzelou reported.

The journalist described how, during dinner, 1 participant squeezed blood from his finger. A scientist sitting next to her explained that the man was most likely testing his biological age.

Self-testing and self-experimentation seemed to be standard practice in this crowd, even when it happened during dinner in an exclusive hotel restaurant,

– Hamzelou concluded.

How to live longer? Dictators want time too

Dreams of extreme longevity are not only the domain of tech billionaires who, intoxicated by their influence over how they have changed people’s lives, set the bar even higher and try to cheat death.

Dictators, too, with access to almost unlimited resources, show keen interest in extending their lives — and therefore their rule. Until recently, the loudest example was Robert Mugabe, the late dictator of Zimbabwe, who was famous for medical trips to Singapore, where he was reportedly treated, among other things, with blood transfusions. Perhaps thanks to this, he reached a truly advanced age: 95.

Putin, Xi and 150 years

Recently, however, Mugabe stopped being the best-known case of a dictator dreaming of rule without end. This happened because of a September meeting in Beijing, whose main event was a grand military parade. On the sidelines of that summit, a hot mic caught a fragment of a private conversation between 2 72-year-olds: Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

The exchange quickly became an online “viral” moment.

In the past, people used to say that it was rare to live to 70. But today, at 70, one is still basically a child,

the Chinese president told his Russian counterpart. Putin picked up the theme and replied:

In a few years, with the development of biotechnology, human organs will be continually transplanted, which will allow people to grow younger, and perhaps even live forever.

Xi Jinping then allowed himself a bold claim:

By the end of this century, people may perhaps live even to 150.

And much suggests that both China and Russia are following the path of American billionaires, using state effort to try to defeat nature: to slow, stop and eventually reverse aging.

Life extension as a project of power

In February 2024, Putin announced a plan titled “New Health-Preserving Technologies.” In May of that year, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova explained to the public that the federal government would invest in “technologies that prevent cellular aging, neurotechnologies and other innovations intended to ensure longevity.” Perhaps this was the basis for Putin’s claim to Xi that continuous organ transplantation would become possible.

But the Chinese are also deeply interested in this subject: how to live longer. In 2025, there was much talk about encouraging results from specialists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who are working on the “rejuvenation” of monkeys.

Biology sets a hard limit

And how do reputable scientists who have studied the aging process for years view extreme life extension? Their findings may seriously worry enthusiasts such as Bryan Johnson or Peter Thiel. In 2024, the prestigious journal Nature published a scientific article organising current knowledge about the prospects for fighting the processes of aging. Its authors, 4 American researchers who have devoted their professional lives to studying human aging, made a sharp claim already in the title: no chance for radical life extension in the 21st century. According to their estimates, at most 15 percent of women and only 5 percent of men will live to 100 in the 21st century.

How long can we really live?

There is no denying that, especially in the 20th century, humans greatly extended life expectancy — almost doubling it over a little more than a century. But we are now approaching the limit. According to researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, no generation born after 1939 will be able to achieve an average life expectancy exceeding 100 years.

In other words, we can care for our health in order to reach old age in decent condition, but some limits cannot simply be overcome. Human cells age relentlessly, and most “miracle” treatments look less like life extension than cosmetic adjustments to the inevitable.

Read this article in Polish: Żyć 150 lat? Tak miliarderzy i dyktatorzy chcą oszukać śmierć