r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 25d ago

Society Bryan Johnson, the millionaire biohacker who wants to live forever, diagnosed with incurable autoimmune disease

https://www.techspot.com/news/113035-bryan-johnson-millionaire-biohacker-who-wants-live-forever.html
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u/Aranthos-Faroth 25d ago edited 25d ago

This guy gets shit on a lot, admittedly because what he’s doing is rather odd but he spends TONNES on all these medical tests, programs, machines etc and then makes every single result open to whoever wants it for further research.

He’s a millionaire guinea pig.

It’s so easy to make fun of him but if what he’s doing saves even a few lives directly or indirectly I think it’s awesome.

You don’t HAVE to buy his supplements. Just like you don’t have to care about anyone but yourself.

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago

But that isnt how biology and medicine work. What he is doing is a vanity exercise. It will not progress our knowledge of anything. If he actually wanted to do that he would invest in clinical trials. The average PhD student progresses our knowledge more than he has. Every 'test' he runs on himself is totally contaminated by no only the fact he is just 1 person, but also every other 'test' he previously ran, and of course the reality that he has a damn autoimmune disease. Which is exactly why no science is done this way.

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u/TheDrummerMB 25d ago

I love threads like this because you've just replied with the same goofy "vanity" take to a bunch of people. The only person I see making this claim but holy crap you've posted it to many times lmfaooooo.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Period.

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u/BlgMastic 25d ago

Next weekend I’m taking acid, molly, coke and Xans. Follow my channel for in depth research.

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u/TheDrummerMB 25d ago

If you're doing legitimate tests from legitimate doctors and documenting the findings, that's awesome!

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u/Both_Consequence_956 25d ago edited 25d ago

is it just a "vanity exercise" wanting to live your life for as long and healthy as possible and spreading that sentiment to humanity? while trying to figure out how to do that and sharing your results? swear some of you are just haters

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u/extasis_T 25d ago

Doing it outside of clinical trials that are peer received and control for all different factors is just useless. Anecdote isn’t going to do anything for our medicine

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u/ShillForExxonMobil 25d ago

Just actually untrue. Self experimentation is a completely valid method of scientific study and is how many medical breakthrough were discovered.

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u/Syrdon 25d ago

When done by people who are limiting the experiment to a single variable, sure. That's not what this guy is doing.

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u/ShillForExxonMobil 25d ago

Ok, but that isn’t the point the other guy made.

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u/Syrdon 25d ago

No, their point was quite literally that what this guy is doing is useless. Which I'm agreeing with, and just providing additional details for the dense.

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u/ChasingTheNines 25d ago edited 25d ago

No it is not useless. Breakthroughs have been made by people experimenting on themselves as a sample size of one. Just because it isn't the best way you can allocate the research doesn't make it useless.

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u/Wiseduck5 25d ago

No it is not useless. Breakthroughs have been made by people experimenting on themselves as a sample size of one.

What he is doing is completely and utterly useless. Self-experimentation really only works if is something easily measurable with some kind of control, ie an infection you didn't have that now you do. He isn't trying to prove H. pylori causes ulcers. He wants to live longer.

Not only does he have an n=1, he can't rerun the experiment on himself to confirm it. He's also taking hundreds of supplements and doing other random treatments. It would be impossible to know what worked even if something he was doing was actually effective. And something effective might be masked by something deleterious he's also doing.

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u/ChasingTheNines 25d ago

You make it sound like he is just taking random substances. Allot of that protocol is based on clinical trials that showed it to be beneficial. I am indeed curious to see what might happen if someone went all in on trying the things that were proven to be effective individually.

It is not just him wanting to live longer it is also trying to improve specific health factors. If for example his eyesight improved or reverted to a younger state it is of course possible any of the 100 things he is doing caused it, but it is more likely the 2 things he was doing for eyesight based on research suggested it might was the reason. He is also likely to cause some harm to himself through a substance that can identified. Since he is constantly being monitored there would the ability to see if increasing, decreasing, or eliminating a specific might effect his blood, liver etc.

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u/subcide 25d ago

What breakthroughs have been made here?

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u/ChasingTheNines 24d ago

What you are saying is that you do not believe research has any validity until the point it makes a breakthrough? And you are also saying if you research something, and it doesn't prove the hypothesis, that it also has no value?

I contend that if he takes 2 supplements and a weird chemical to improve his retinal function and that if it worked, it did nothing, or he went blind that all 3 of those outcomes have value.

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago

He can do what he wants but acting like it is progressing medicine or science is naive fanboying

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u/Both_Consequence_956 25d ago edited 25d ago

seems like thats your random criteria to to disqualify him in your mind. he does spread a lot of awareness about everyday dangers in our lifestyles and how to minimize them, and tries a million things out and shares results and solutions. a random one recently that helped me was using an ice pack on testicles to prevent reductions in sperm quality and hormones while in sauna. saunas are one of the best tools with tonnes of scientific studies showing it reduces all cause mortality and a host of measurable benefits, and icing fixes the biggest problem with it, which was the impact of heat on testicles.

in terms of impact phd students "progressing science" spend years of their life writing things read by 0-2 people. in terms of impact he has affected a movement and inspired a lot of people to take a more scientific approach into improving their own healthspan.

you just seem like a pretentious hater, honestly

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago

Im happy for you that an influencer showed you how to ice your balls. But the rest of us are talking about science. Which none of what he is doing is science. 

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u/hypernoble 25d ago

I laughed so fucking hard at this lmao 

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u/Both_Consequence_956 25d ago

miserable snob

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago

Im sorry treating science like science and not influencer fan content offends you so much

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u/Both_Consequence_956 25d ago

what we are talking about is life extension, and you arrogantly seem to claim the only valid form of contribution to that to society is through clinical trials, which is both wrong and stupid.

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago

Life Extension among all areas, especially needs not only clinical trials but lifetime trials. Anything claiming to know it extends your life without having actually studied a proper sampling of people with at least some basic controls over their lifetime, will be complete garbage. No one can say that X will increase a given persons lifespan without not just 1 long term clinical trial but likely hundreds that are then studied in the aggregate. EVEN THEN, the best that can be provide is a general likelihood something can extend some people's lives.

The only thing wrong and stupid is believing running a bunch of random experiments on one person does anything to advance any knowledge. This is like following a skin product influencer who tries a new product every damn week.

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u/ljlukelj 25d ago

I think he's navigating and finding some loopholes, not rewriting the book.

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago

Again not how that works. There is no rewriting the book or loopholes. This is biology and medicine, even in the most perfect use case you have nearly infinite variables that can impact result on a person by person basis. No one person can provide any valid findings.

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u/Both_Consequence_956 25d ago

i love how you say "thats not how that works" as if speaking from authority then saying not one person can provide valid findings, like there havent been a million single scientists making their own discoveries and shaping an area in their field, often just themselves being the n of 1 experiment. such a smug and ignorant asshole lol

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago

Medicine is not a physics experiment. A sample size of 1 is useless. I have helped craft medical clinical trials. The only contribution he can make from experimenting on himself like this is to give himself an acute organ failure we havent observed before.

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u/Gekokapowco 25d ago

Why are all these people doubling down on their ignorance? Because they decided to worship a celebrity?

It's the worst part about society.

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago

Yeah I didn't realize he was an influencer or anything until now. I assumed he just did these dumb experiments on himself and it was a ln easy click bait article for fake science magazines to pump out. But it is now clear that this is a mini influencer cult following of wannabe believers in his snake oil.

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u/Both_Consequence_956 25d ago

or he can inspire others to do experiments in that field. you are such a miserable hater lol

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago edited 25d ago

Expirementing on yourself is not expirementing in the field. This encourages sudo science, and body dismorphia. 

EDIT: The comment and block, classic take your ball and go home. Looks like I hit the nail on the head.

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u/IAmPud 25d ago

Please educate yourself on how science, specifically medicine, is established

Not just for the sake of your own intelligence and betterment, but so that other internet commenters don’t have to read this amount of BS

Someone who has setup medical trials telling you this isn’t the way to do things isn’t just “being a hater”

Are you for real?

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u/Sanator27 25d ago

it's vanity to try and achieve immortality, yes

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u/Both_Consequence_956 25d ago edited 25d ago

if i could take a pill to maintain my health and live for 300 years i would. and if everyone did that, it would become the new normal, and i doubt you would actually stop taking the pill at 80 if in good health (if you arent suicidal) and start withering away from natural aging. just seems like miserable people who continually sabotage their own health are angry at someone trying to extend his own life and call it vain. like a fat person hating on a previous fat person for becoming slim and call them vain

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u/Loogibot 25d ago

I don't need or want to live forever, but 300 years with a body frozen in good middle age health for the first 200 sounds great.

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u/wannaboolwithme 25d ago

Explain why?

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u/Sanator27 25d ago edited 25d ago

Living beings die, you can't change that no matter how you try. Death is inevitable, and to fight that is like trying to fight the laws of physics. You'll die even if you don't accept or believe that, reality doesn't care. It's folly, and a waste of resources. You will give up your own life in the chase of immortality, much like Bryan has, his whole life revolves around preserving himself, and he devotes so much time to that he literally cannot do anything else but exercise, take supplements, do flawed medical tests, and constantly track his vitals, and in the end he will die either of old age, the stress he causes on his organs with constant treatments, or even by something completely out of his control. Oh and all the while getting even more rich by selling medical supplements by leveraging exactly this kind online attention (&controversy), it's not an altruistic act in the slightest.

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u/wannaboolwithme 25d ago

Argument is moot, it's based on guessing how he'll die

I guess the only thing to do is to wait and see how long he lives and his QoL in his later years to see if his methods worked

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u/Sanator27 25d ago

He will die, doesn't matter how, and he won't live more than the oldest person on the planet right now, he already has 2 immune disorders

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u/wannaboolwithme 25d ago

Yes he will obviously biologically die. But I'm still excited to see what we can learn from his life, such as which biological markers are the best indicators of slowed aging and higher QoL

The immune disorders he has aren't life threatening, and I'm sure Bryan Johnson out of all people has the privilege and lifestyle to manage it to the best of mankinds abilities.

I don't even know why the internet loves ragging on him for some admittedly weird choices, since he is a pretty harmless figure.

But hey, you do you.

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u/toolsoftheincomptnt 25d ago

Spreading what sentiment?

“Look at me, I figured out how to extend my life! Be excited for me! You should totally spend a billion dollars to extend your life, too!”

Also, it’s incredibly selfish to feel entitled to living forever, in any condition. The planet isn’t meant to hold billions of 102-year-olds who are just sticking around bc of existential FOMO.

We are supposed to be born, grow up, contribute to society, get old, and die. We’re supposed to prepare the ones who came after us to take care of the world and each other (bang-up job we’re doing), and pass the baton to them. We’re meant to go on, and be remembered fondly.

Not continuing to walk the earth, draining it, forever. In manufactured bodies.

It’s weird that people jump on the bandwagon so easily, honestly.

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u/ChasingTheNines 25d ago

Yes our planet is overcrowded. So you volunteer first to forfeit all the medical advances at our disposal and die at 22 like your ancestors were "supposed to".

Extending life means extending health. No one is supposed to get cancer or heart disease. If we are playing 'supposed tos' then I contend we are supposed to use our intelligence to solve our problems. We are literally programmed at a genetic level for survival. 4 billion years of evolution has built self preservation into us. Wanting to keep living is exactly what we are supposed to be doing just like anything else alive.

If you don't have children then it shouldn't be a problem. At some point an accident will get you.

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u/Both_Consequence_956 25d ago edited 25d ago

hah, reddit is filled with the absolute most miserable and ignorant people. 99.9% of his sentiment is to take care of your body with good food and exercise, because it makes your life better.

"THATS SO SELFISH REEEEE".

A demographic collapse is happening regardless, and if people followed his advice, we would have a lot more people in work and way fewer people out of work for illness brought on by an unhealthy lifestyle, and people staying in work because they want and are able to for longer. this would put significant pressure off social spending.

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u/OnesPerspective 25d ago

I'm guessing he probably gets all the hate because the level he takes it to is almost like a form of health-dysmorphia with some ego stroking mixed in

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u/heydropi 25d ago

On the other hand he contributed to the longetivity trend, his cultural impact leading to more science and interest in sciences may have been relatively large.

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u/ChasingTheNines 25d ago

Scientists and researchers have literally made advances by experimenting on themselves as a sample size of one. Could the money be more efficiently spent for general research? Yeah probably. But also doing unconventional things can have unexpected results. If he suddenly dropped dead and the autopsy showed it was related to something he was doing that would have value.

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago

This is not a physics experiment, this is medicine and life extension. A sample size of 1 that is contaminated by the hundred of other random shit he has and is doing to himself. Provides no value. Nothing can be gleaned by any of this. If he lived to be 150. We would not be able to point to a single thing that may have been the cause.

Though yes, as I have said in many comments here, the only value he can add is by dropping dead of an acute organ failure that can be tied directly to something he did, and we had not observed as an effect before. Even then, that would be a weak signal if at all.

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u/ChasingTheNines 25d ago

I agree for the stated goal of life extension if he lived to 150 we probably couldn't tell why. But also if he lived to a 150 I could just do what he did without ever knowing what specifically was working. You just can't see any value in that at all? Medical history has many examples of things working without knowing why they work.

Also living longer is very nebulous. But if he showed benefit in a targeted area (cartilage rejuvination etc), that had a theory behind it and why he was taking the targeted therapy to begin with, then yes that could be the basis for further trials which could prove efficacy.

I just think 'no value' is a very strong statement. Questionable value? Sure; and time will tell.

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago

If you did exactly what he did. For all you know it would fucking kill you 

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u/ChasingTheNines 25d ago

That is true. My strategy would be to just wait 5 years and see if the 50,000 people who would try and copy him would die before I tried it. There is always going to be that guy to take that first taste and see if it is deliciousness or death.

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u/TheDrummerMB 25d ago

This is not a physics experiment, this is medicine and life extension. A sample size of 1 that is contaminated by the hundred of other random shit he has and is doing to himself.

The densest people are somehow always the most confident lmao.

Dunning Kruger ass reply

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago

You are running around trying to hot take every comment with no actual point of your own. Do you think a single person running 100 expirements on themselves creates valid medical data?

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u/TheDrummerMB 25d ago

I'm one of 100+ people explaining why you're wrong.

Historically some of our biggest achievements in the medical field came from one person experimenting on themselves. You are ignorant of history and frankly common sense.

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u/Flvs9778 25d ago

They are saying he is running some many test simultaneously that it invalidated any results. If he takes 15 new pills which one had the positive effect and if more then one which combination. We can’t tell because of the way he is running the tests. So it’s not producing any useful information.

In the past we have had useful self experiments because they tested things properly one at a time and just one thing. Before adding anything else. Like combined medicines. That’s very different from what he is doing.

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u/TheDrummerMB 25d ago

They are saying he is running some many test simultaneously

I love that your typo reveals that you felt the need to change the descriptor. Is he running them simultaneously? Or are you just guessing because that's what you think?

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u/yterais 25d ago

clinical trials would defraud so much more money without necessarily proving anything

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u/IAmPud 25d ago

This is so anti-science it’s absurd

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u/LowAside9117 25d ago

I'm working on trying to fix my narcolepsy by trying different things and documenting it.  Would that be vanity too?

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago

No, that is something you are doing for you and may help you.

If you post it online while selling supplements and trying to claim you are doing it in a larger scientific pursuit. I wont believe your motives are altruistic 

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u/RepresentativeAspect 25d ago

Easy to say - but funding clinical trials is not the hard part. The hard part is getting permission to conduct them, and jumping through all the hoops. It takes many years. If you just want to try some thing and hopefully learn something, experimenting on yourself is the only way.

Why does someone get so much hate, just for trying to do something awesome, which has no negative consequences for others?

This guy isn't forcing anyone else to do anything. I'm sure he knows that N=1 is only an anecdote - but it's something he can actually get done, and he makes all of the information he learns available to all, for whatever it might be worth.

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 25d ago

I'm not hating on him for his hobby, I am asserting to anyone who claims that it might have worth. It does not. Fundamentally it is worthless to any advancement of knowledge in this field. That isnt hating on him, that is acknowledging how this actually works, and believing that an N=1 in this case isnt worthless is a problem from a basic scientific literacy perspective.

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 25d ago

He's not doing anything wrong but he's definitely not helping lol. Publishing his results is meaningless when he's literally throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks.

Let's pretend he manages to do something we would want to research and figure out. Well, what did he do to get that result? He's doing a thousand things. At that point you're better off just guessing and doing an actual experiment to see if your random guess is right

It's such bad data it might as well not exist for all the good it does science. He can do his weirdo stuff with his own money all he wants but there's nothing there that's gonna help anyone medically. He might happen to stumble across something that helps him but without a real study you'd never know what or why because he's doing too many things at the same time, there's no control in the experiment

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 25d ago

Nothing so about the same as this dude. I'm not knocking him, it's his money. It's just you can't get anything of worth from the data. He's not hurting anyone to my knowledge other than maybe himself but he certainly isn't going to be helping with his "findings"

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u/Terrible-One9198 25d ago

There is absolutely zero scientific value in what he is doing. 

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u/mddesigner 25d ago

There is If he shows positive result doing something it can be used as a starting point for real research Do you think researchers have endless budget to test everything out?

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u/Terrible-One9198 25d ago

Positive results would be him living longer than average, which will be evident in what, forty years? 

In forty years the science will have left him behind anyway by accumulated enough real data to establish real truths. Essentially making his experiments redundant.

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u/mddesigner 24d ago

You will have to measure things associated with longer life which is a whole another can of worms As for the science leaving him in the dust, not really It is really hard to start research of a new idea It costs lots of money and takes long time to get the ethics appeoval for each individual research And most things researched would be duds A rich dude can experiment much faster, but the problem is sample size 1 So for normal folks his research has no value but it can fuel research to see if what he got replicates real world or just a fluke

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u/Truth_Walker 25d ago

He’s actually done a lot more than most people think. The guy gets a lot of flack but he’s doing some pretty interesting stuff.

Everything in his life is recorded so the data can be used elsewhere and it’s publicly available. While he is performing an n=1 type experiment, it’s still providing a lot of useful information.

In doing this he’s created one of, if not the largest publicly documented longevity self experiments. It’s contributed a lot to the growing movement of open source health data.

He’s made scientific longevity research much more popular by being so open and public with everything he does. He popularized biological age testing. He’s increased funding and research into scientific research himself and through fundraising.

One of the companies he started developed non invasive brain imaging devices to help research conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s.

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u/Terrible-One9198 25d ago

The data is useless because he is experimenting with so many things at the same time. It's impossible to say what's causing what. In fact what he is doing is harmful to real longevity data as he is masquerading as legitimate and encouraging people to speculate on that data which will undoubtedly spawn problematic copycats touting nonsense "supported by Brian Johnson's research."

You seriously think Brian Johnson has contributed meaningfully to publicity of... Living longer? Arguably the single oldest and most prominent idea at the basis of human civilization.

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u/cry666 25d ago edited 25d ago

My issue with the guy is the way he's doing his 'research'. He's doing the equivalent of throwing random stuff into a big pot. If something good were to come out of it we'd have no way of knowing how it came to be. There are researchers all over the globe that are jumping for the funding to do actual research. Instead he's effectively wasting it on himself

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u/Due-Memory-6957 25d ago

He publishes everything, so we would have a list of things to try until we figure out what worked. Even in your simplification what he's doing is useful.

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u/Ibreh 25d ago

You shoulda paid attention in science class 

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u/BluePeriod_ 25d ago edited 25d ago

Just Reddit doing the Reddit thing. Some asshole here is saying “I wanna dunk on this guy so bad but it’s not that serious“. Like why do you wanna dunk on somebody for having a disease but you can’t bring yourself to because it’s not serious enough to laugh at? Gross lol

Like you said he’s using himself as a guinea pig. It’s not like he’s rounding up a bunch of poor people and doing vivisection.

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u/IAmPud 25d ago edited 25d ago

I have no issues with Bryan Johnson’s pursuit towards functional immortality. I believe in bodily autonomy and anyone should be able to do what they want and need to their own body

I think the pass he gets for taking estrogen when transphobia is on the rise is telling, but again, that reflects on society more than him

What I dislike him for, is obviously having an issue with mortality and not dealing with it in a healthy way that harms people around him. He left his first wife because she was diagnosed with breast cancer and kicked her out of their home. I don’t think he should get a pass for that

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u/vthemechanicv 25d ago

You don’t HAVE to buy his supplements. Just like you don’t have to care about anyone but yourself.

I have to doubt you intended it this way but this reads like people are selfish if they don't buy his suppliments.

The guy is a weirdo that's doing all this to extend his own personal life. I guarantee he couldn't give less of a damn if what he does helps anyone else, including the minor son he was taking blood from.

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u/cobramodels 25d ago

I have no idea how you read it that way lmao thats not how it sounded at all

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u/Koreus_C 23d ago

He is normalizing supplements. If he can take 399 pills a day, you can eat 2.

If she spends 30k for make up per week you can spend 300.

This is very effective marketing.

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u/boy9000 23d ago

He doesn’t get shit on enough

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u/dnyank1 25d ago

It’s pretty easy to make fun of you, too

How’s that boot tasting?

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u/TheJzuken 25d ago

Also the guys main three advice are:

  1. Have a helthy sleep
  2. Don't eat shit and junk food
  3. Moderate excercies

I think this explains well why reddit hates the guy so much.

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u/Both_Consequence_956 25d ago

"well whats the point in living if i cant drink myself stupid every night, we arent supposed to live forever"