Challenging Death

"RAAD stands for Revolution Against Aging and Death, and it [a conference] happens once a year."
"People from all over the world come together and have discussions and presentations on ways to extend your life."
"What I do is I eat all the food I eat within a six- to eight-hour period and the rest of the time I fast. I also try to eliminate as much in the way of carbohydrates from my diet." 
"I used to hang out with older men on the beach in Florida when I was a child, and every one of them told me they wished they could have more time with their children and see their grandchildren grow older."
"I want to see the future. To me it's a very bright, very cool place. If you look back to 500 years ago,  you had the plagues ravaging Europe and death and destruction and war. That was then and now we have a better lifestyle. Imagine what it'll be like in 500 years' time...."
Neal VanDeRee, 58, The Church of Perpetual Life, Hollywood, Florida

"Life expectancy since the 1850s has almost doubled."
"It's really staggering. Even since the 1960s, it's increased over a decade in men and women."
Colin Selman, professor of biogerontology, University of Glasgow

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"Biological immortality is not something that belongs to the field of science fiction", asserted Dr. Marco Ruggiero, 63, retired professor of biology at the University of Florence, and now living in Arizona. He recently gifted the world with the launch of a probiotic to improve the production of klotho, a protein viewed as an aging suppressor found in the intestines of long-lived humans -- which shares characteristics to the microbiome of the naked mole rat.

And Dr. Ruggiero is confident that his microbial formulation -- Immortalis Klotho Formula (IKF) will be recognized as the key to everlasting life. Dr. Ruggiero recommends a three-month treatment protocol of IKF, 50% taken orally, the other half by enema, at a cost of ten thousand dollars. Think that's a steep price to pay for outliving every one else on the planet? There are many who would never agree, relishing the very thought of immortality, enabling them to make full use of the wealth they've amassed.

The world's wealthy who subscribe to a common aspiration, to live forever, recently attended a mega convention centre in Las Vegas, and the other thing they all had in common besides ample disposable income, was advancing age, closing in on retirement. But although human longevity is on a steady uphill climb, the thousand or so conventioneers need greater assurance that they, personally, will not only live longer, but forever.

From Silicon Valley, home of mega-billionaires, comes a large constituency of well-known names who intend to live on, and on, and on. The brave battle against what nature has informed us since forever is inevitable, appears to be anchored in the home of the world wide web's most advantaged entrepreneurs. Take Aubrey de Grey, for example, computer scientist who invested an inheritance of $15 million into founding SENS which Peter Thiel co-founder of PayPal was an early investor in.

"In any other part of the world, if you fail, people think you're not very good, whereas in Silicon Valley the default assumption if you fail is you had the courage to try something difficult", explained de Grey of the few people with more than enough wealth and enterprise to meet the notion of immortality head on. The California Life Company -- Calico -- was set up in 2013 to tackle aging and its effects, by Google's co-founder. And they discovered the world's first "non-aging mammal", the naked mole rat.

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If a rat's genes could promise immortality, why not a human's? Where the will is present, the way can be found. A promising area of research is parabiosis, transfer of blood between old and young mammals to pump the body with younger blood cells. After all, we develop diseases partially through cells worn down gradually  which as we age reproduce less precisely, resulting in flaws that develop to become serious illnesses. Old, mutated blood would be replaced with vibrant new plasma with Parabiosis, a mice-tested theory.

Ambrosia, servicing Silicon Valley executives, saw the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warn people they were "Being preyed upon by unscrupulous actors touting treatments of plasma from young donors as cures and remedies", causing the company to stop offering blood transfusions where for the past three years, Ambrosia had offered one-litre transfusions to about 150 users who paid $8,000 per treatment.

The founder of Bulletproof Coffee, Dave Asprey, injects stem cells from his own bone marrow, then reinjects them into his spinal column, convinced this will prolong his lifespan. He is determined to live to at least 180. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, believes a calorie-restricted diet and fasting for 22 hours daily is the right formula for immortality. Which may explain quite a bit about the infuriating propensity of Twitter to steward its platform in nonsensical ways.

Mr.VanDeRee of the Church of Perpetual Life, relies on yet another brilliant solution to perpetual life, a drug called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), able to halt cells from deteriorating while aging. The compound is a key element in keeping telomeres -- which protect chromosomes from aging  ravages -- stable, strong and long, since shortened telomeres are yet another signal of the aging process. Another innovation that excites Mr. VanDeRee is the use of two senolytic agents, a treatment for diabetic kidney disease, which has been detected to destroy senescent (decaying) cells.

Cryo-sauna. Jacob Lund/Shutterstock