Speaker 1: Around two thousand and sixteen, the venture capitalist Peter Thiel
Speaker 1: was at the center of a strange controversy. One of
Speaker 1: his lieutenants had connected with a startup that was trying
Speaker 1: to cheap death. This company, Ambrosia Health, was infusing older
Speaker 1: people with the blood of the young. Bring on the
Speaker 1: media frenzy and vampire jokes. Ambrosia got so much attention
Speaker 1: it was even parodied on the HBO show Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: In one episode, a Teak executive was followed around by
Speaker 1: a so called blood boy to siphon his youth whenever
Speaker 1: he needed to pick me up, especially assistant, of course, not,
Speaker 1: it's my transfusion associate. Now, Peter Teel says he never
Speaker 1: tried it and didn't invest, though his interest was made
Speaker 1: public in several news reports at the time. Now it
Speaker 1: turns out there is actually a real, untold story about
Speaker 1: this startup that he helped make famous and the more
Speaker 1: than one people who actually signed up to be a
Speaker 1: part of Ambrosia's experiment. I talked to one of them.
Speaker 1: I asked, what is it really like to feel a
Speaker 1: young person's blood pumping through your veins. There's a kind
Speaker 1: of an intensity that comes along with it. You feel
Speaker 1: kind of a little more alert, a little stronger, a
Speaker 1: little more in the present. Uh. And there's also a
Speaker 1: little bit of a buzz that can be too much.
Speaker 1: Kind of sounds like you're explaining in adrenaline rational most
Speaker 1: it's very much like that. This week the extraordinary rise
Speaker 1: and fall of Ambrosia Health. This futuristic company pushed the
Speaker 1: boundaries of science and federal regulations by infusing older people
Speaker 1: with young blood plasma in a quest to slow aging.
Speaker 1: Ambrosia and its founder, Jesse Karmazin infuriated scientists who said
Speaker 1: the treatment was unproven in danger us, but that didn't
Speaker 1: start it from experimenting on humans, that is, until the
Speaker 1: federal government got involved. I'm Brad Stone and I'm Olivia
Speaker 1: Carvill and you're listening to Decrypted. In two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: Jesse Carmazon was a medical student at a hospital in
Speaker 1: Boston in the emergency room watching a blood transfusion. That's
Speaker 1: when he had what he described as a Eureka moment.
Speaker 1: Jesse had studied biology at Princeton and was obsessed with
Speaker 1: the field of anti aging. He had read about how
Speaker 1: scientists had been able to reverse aging and mice by
Speaker 1: infusing them with the blood of younger mice, and he
Speaker 1: wondered to himself, could this also work for humans? GESC
Speaker 1: decided to drop out of his residency program rather than
Speaker 1: become a doctor. He set out to reverse aging. Hello,
Speaker 1: my name is Jessie Carmesan and as you heard, I'm
Speaker 1: the founder of Ambrosia and were a company interested in
Speaker 1: making you young again, so we all know that we're aging.
Speaker 1: That's GC introducing his company on stage at a conference
Speaker 1: called the Superhuman Summit. His pitch was simple. GC believed
Speaker 1: he could slow aging by infusing older patients with blood
Speaker 1: from teenages and people under the age of twenty five. Ambrosia,
Speaker 1: as you might recall, is the mythological food that ancient
Speaker 1: Greeks believed the gods aid to make them live forever,
Speaker 1: and the treatment on offer was based on those mice
Speaker 1: studies that Jesse had been so fascinated with. Since the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, scientists have been actually stitching together mice to
Speaker 1: form an organic circulatory system to investigate what happens when
Speaker 1: younger fluids flow through an older body. Stitching together mice,
Speaker 1: it does sound vague and horrifying, all at once. Yes,
Speaker 1: but they literally shaved the sides of the mice them
Speaker 1: open and then sow them to one another. It's like
Speaker 1: reverse engineering Siamese mice twins. This historic and totally grewesome
Speaker 1: procedure is called parabiosis, and it's still used in studies today.
Speaker 1: Multiple scientists have found it The older mice became smarter, healthier,
Speaker 1: and stronger with the young blood. In some cases, the
Speaker 1: affir even became shinier. Jessie thought he could achieve the
Speaker 1: same effect in humans with transfusions of blood plasma, even
Speaker 1: though trials and mice often don't translate to human results.
Speaker 1: His very first patients were as parents. These are my parents,
Speaker 1: and they liked the treatment. My dad said he felt
Speaker 1: very energetic putting up storm shoulders for the recent hurricane,
Speaker 1: and my mother thought her skin improved. It just thirty
Speaker 1: one years old, Jessie was ready to take it a
Speaker 1: step further. In the summer of two thousand and sixteen,
Speaker 1: he launched a clinical trial in the U S. Patients
Speaker 1: paid eight thousand dollars for a leader of young blood plasma.
Speaker 1: To be clear, ambrosia was thankfully not stitching young people
Speaker 1: to old people like the scientists had done with mice.
Speaker 1: It was offering basic blood transfusions, a life saving treatment
Speaker 1: that's used every day in hospitals all over the world.
Speaker 1: Jesse bought the plasma from blood banks, and because the
Speaker 1: treatment is already available, he didn't need a sign off
Speaker 1: from the Food and Drug Administration. All he had to
Speaker 1: do was say it was an off label application for
Speaker 1: an existing treatment, which the FDA allows. But he did
Speaker 1: seek approval for the clinical trial from the Institute of
Speaker 1: Regenerative and Cellular Medicine's Review Board. This is an independent
Speaker 1: group which determines whether a study on human subjects is
Speaker 1: ethical or not. The board gave g C the green light,
Speaker 1: and it was listed on the federal government's official database
Speaker 1: of clinical trials. Dr Barbara Krutchkoff, who signed off on it,
Speaker 1: said she didn't feel like she had the right to
Speaker 1: reject this study. Well, we approve the application basically because
Speaker 1: blood transfusions are considered safe. They're done in millions of
Speaker 1: times around the world every year, and any physician can
Speaker 1: order a blood transfusion. It's the practice of medicine. It's
Speaker 1: not experimental in and of itself. Barbara said the board
Speaker 1: wanted to be sure that patients understood how experimental the
Speaker 1: procedure was, especially given the allure of an unproven treatment
Speaker 1: that was claiming it could potentially extend youth. I mean
Speaker 1: a taxi the the idea. I mean, people people want
Speaker 1: to live forever, they want, they're looking for immortality. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're how popular the vampire movies were. I mean it
Speaker 1: kind of just picked up on that sensationalism. Here's how
Speaker 1: the trial worked. GC tested as patient's blood before the
Speaker 1: infusion and then a month after. He was looking for
Speaker 1: the presence of biomarkers in our blood commonly associated with
Speaker 1: a related diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's. Ambrosia's trial was
Speaker 1: unorthodox because Jesse was essentially experimenting on humans who are
Speaker 1: paying for the privilege. Plus, Jesse was making some pretty
Speaker 1: outlandish claims about what his treatments could do. You know,
Speaker 1: when people think about aging, they think about their appearance.
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty happy to report here that we are
Speaker 1: seeing improvements in appearance. I've seen it myself. It's kind
Speaker 1: of dramatic. And furthermore, on the medical front, we're seeing
Speaker 1: improvements in patients with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease Parkinson's diabetes.
Speaker 1: And so that's an interesting idea and you can get
Speaker 1: past the gruesomeness of using blood um feel free to
Speaker 1: find us. Thank you. About one and fifty patients did
Speaker 1: find ambrosia. We know that one person was as old
Speaker 1: as nyby two. Until now, only one participant has ever
Speaker 1: spoken publicly about receiving transfusions from Ambrosia, and according to
Speaker 1: other media, he died of a heart attack last year.
Speaker 1: But the company put me in touch with a different
Speaker 1: patient who had been undergoing the treatments, and for this podcast,
Speaker 1: he agreed to talk about his experience on the condition
Speaker 1: of anonymity. We're going to call this patient Bruce. We
Speaker 1: heard from him at the start of the episode. He's
Speaker 1: a businessman in his early sixties and eight years ago
Speaker 1: he was left paralyzed from a motorcycle accident. The bike
Speaker 1: went off the road, took me with it and into
Speaker 1: a canyon. Um and very rocky career, and I was
Speaker 1: up there basically playing pinball with the rocks for a while.
Speaker 1: So it was. It was a pretty violent accident. His
Speaker 1: doctors told him he would never walk again, but Bruce
Speaker 1: refused to believe it. You know, in my case. Uh,
Speaker 1: it came down to a matter of what I was
Speaker 1: willing to accept and um, you know, was this going
Speaker 1: to be the way I wanted to live my life? Uh?
Speaker 1: And the answer was no. He took his medical care
Speaker 1: into his own hands and started experimenting with alternative treatments.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of it is unconventional. I mean
Speaker 1: there's goofy little electrical things that come from Russia. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know where you you have a Russian space program
Speaker 1: product that you know, supposedly develops muscles in space. You
Speaker 1: have you know, electrical stimulation with acupuncture needles that are
Speaker 1: placed pretty deep in the body. Uh. You have fairly painful,
Speaker 1: very deep tissue massage the and then of course you
Speaker 1: get into the really a satiric stuff like the blood transfusions.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and sixteen, he came across Ambrosia Health
Speaker 1: and decided to call g C himself. UM. I asked
Speaker 1: him if I could participate in his trials? And what
Speaker 1: was his response? Of course I could. Bruce traveled to
Speaker 1: San Francisco for his first treatment, which was conducted at
Speaker 1: a regular doctor's office. Jesse had partnered with four physicians
Speaker 1: in California, Nebraska and Florida, who administered the treatment. Bruce
Speaker 1: said he had a few minor tests beforehand. The doctor
Speaker 1: checked his heart rate and blood pressure, and then Bruce
Speaker 1: sat back and received the transfusion. Well, you notice a
Speaker 1: change immediately, um, But you know, based on my experience
Speaker 1: with other transfusions, you always noticed a change immediately. I
Speaker 1: will say, though, that with this young blood um, at
Speaker 1: least in my experience, the effect is a little stronger.
Speaker 1: Over eighteen months, Bruce had three transfusions through Ambrosia and
Speaker 1: paid close to twenty thousand dollars. He said he kept
Speaker 1: going back because it made him feel good and it
Speaker 1: helped him sleep through the night. I asked Bruce whether
Speaker 1: this might all just be a placebo effect? Now? Was
Speaker 1: I psychologically affecting myself? Possibly? Did I have benefits? I did? Uh?
Speaker 1: Does it matter whether they were self induced or you know,
Speaker 1: a direct result of the transfusion? Probably not, as long
Speaker 1: as I had the results that I had a Bruce's
Speaker 1: clinical trial wrapped up in April two and eighteen, and
Speaker 1: by then some problems were starting to surface. Jessie had
Speaker 1: been seeking venture capital funding to grow the business and
Speaker 1: open up new locations in New York, Texas, and Ohio,
Speaker 1: but no one wanted to back him. I talked to
Speaker 1: Gesc in early January, and he brushed this off, saying
Speaker 1: that investors are usually looking for companies that have their
Speaker 1: own proprietary technology right, whereas a common blood transfusion can't
Speaker 1: be patented. When we spoke, ges C was flying high.
Speaker 1: He said he was gearing up to publish the results
Speaker 1: from his clinical trial and that they would be impossible
Speaker 1: for the scientific community to ignore. He claimed patients with
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's were able to do their finances again and that
Speaker 1: others with severe heart disease were out running again, and
Speaker 1: he was excited because he had just signed up his
Speaker 1: first cancer pation. Gesc said that his trial results showed
Speaker 1: that the presence of precancerous blood cells had been reduced
Speaker 1: by twenty He claimed that the treatment quote almost certainly
Speaker 1: extends people's lives, and this was when the alarm bells
Speaker 1: really started ringing for me, right, I think it started
Speaker 1: ringing for a lot of people. They are federal laws
Speaker 1: that restrict making those kinds of statements without evidence, and
Speaker 1: more people were starting to hear about these supposed benefits.
Speaker 1: The reaction in the scientific community was almost universally outreach,
Speaker 1: especially from the scientists who did the kind of research
Speaker 1: in mice that Ambrochia was built on. Professor Arena convoy
Speaker 1: Off UC Berkeley is one of those scientists. When you
Speaker 1: published our work on blood exchange in mice, Jessic Arnzan
Speaker 1: called me and left message and my voice mail at
Speaker 1: work saying how he enjoyed reading the paper and that
Speaker 1: he wants to collaborate or do something together. And I
Speaker 1: never even replied to this message because it was completely
Speaker 1: out of the norm, and because it seems that he
Speaker 1: either did not understand our findings or he decided actively
Speaker 1: misinterpret our findings. Arena and other scientists started calling on
Speaker 1: Jesse to publish the data from his clinical trial, but
Speaker 1: he deflected the requests, saying the results will still be
Speaker 1: in peer reviewed. Meanwhile, he pushed on with his aggressive marketing.
Speaker 1: Jesse was saying he could improve people's vision, their skin,
Speaker 1: their looks. He even told one journalist that the treatment
Speaker 1: quote comes pretty close to immortality. But behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: not all of the results were terrific. Jesse first told
Speaker 1: me that there had been no serious incidents, but Barbara Krutchkoff,
Speaker 1: the doctor who greenlit the trial said at least one
Speaker 1: patient had an adverse reaction, and this lines up with
Speaker 1: what other media had reported as well. Turns out there's
Speaker 1: a reason why blood transfusions are only used in life
Speaker 1: or death situations. Here's Arena convoy again that are expected
Speaker 1: side of it that some of these people who undergo
Speaker 1: blood translusion might experience enough lactic short or be infected
Speaker 1: by protogen's in blood, or have delayed in appropriate activation
Speaker 1: of their immune system. And then just this past February,
Speaker 1: the federal government got involved. But today the FDA said
Speaker 1: it had significant public health concerns about the use of
Speaker 1: plasma from young daughters as a means to hault normal
Speaker 1: aging or medical conditions. The idea of infusing plasma into
Speaker 1: the agency issued a statement that seemed to be targeted
Speaker 1: specifically at JESSE. It said that plasma transfusions could cause shock, infection, hives,
Speaker 1: heart disease, and lung injury, and should not be used
Speaker 1: for treating the natural process of aging. The statement said
Speaker 1: there were concerns that some patients were being quote preyed
Speaker 1: upon by unscrupulous actors pouting plasma treatments as cures and
Speaker 1: remedies within hours, Ambrosia Health announced it would cease patient
Speaker 1: treatments immediately. When I first connected with GC before all this,
Speaker 1: he'd reply to my emails within a few hours. But
Speaker 1: he hasn't answered any of my phone calls over to
Speaker 1: earned any of my emails since the FDA warning. In fact,
Speaker 1: he hasn't actually made any public statements at all. And
Speaker 1: as for the results from that clinical trial, well, everyone's
Speaker 1: still waiting. It's been a few weeks since the FDA
Speaker 1: warning came down. The controversy caused a commotion in the
Speaker 1: world of regenerative medicine, but researchers see it's just one small,
Speaker 1: misguided company that doesn't represent the field at all. In fact,
Speaker 1: they say that, if anything, it's been a distraction. I
Speaker 1: spoke to one entrepreneur. His name was Tristan Edwards, and
Speaker 1: he runs a company called Life Biosciences. He was afraid
Speaker 1: that the media scrum that's erupted around Ambrosia could potentially
Speaker 1: cast a shadow over other research ch in this field.
Speaker 1: I would hate for people who think, Okay, they have
Speaker 1: been sold. I'm going to start buying blood from around
Speaker 1: humans that haven't had naturally tested. But also would also
Speaker 1: hate for the area itself to be kind of dismissed
Speaker 1: because the promising data in the animal studies within mine
Speaker 1: sort of cloned to be the same as each other. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, that could lead to some very interesting medicines
Speaker 1: one day, but we're still in might there yet. I've
Speaker 1: talked to a lot of academics while reporting the story,
Speaker 1: and many of them believe we're on the cusp of
Speaker 1: major developments and anti aging. Some of them are even
Speaker 1: working with young blood plasma transfusions right now. Barbara, the
Speaker 1: doctor who backed the Ambrosia trial, said that the field
Speaker 1: is moving forward rapidly despite Jessy's mistakes. There are many
Speaker 1: other experiments that are being done now with the young
Speaker 1: plasma that have built on the amblosure trail, the mistakes
Speaker 1: and the benefits. For example, we have some double blind
Speaker 1: placebo studies that are being done looking at looking at
Speaker 1: these more specific elements of what's actually happening. And this
Speaker 1: was all this was because of the Ambrosia trial. What
Speaker 1: we should learn from Ambrosia Health is that evidence based
Speaker 1: medicine is the best way to advance the field. Not testimonials,
Speaker 1: not promises of benefit, but evidence based medicine real data,
Speaker 1: and there is real data out there. Last November, the
Speaker 1: Neurology Center in Houston started a young pleasma and fusion
Speaker 1: study with forty patients with Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis. One
Speaker 1: of the researchers told me that after one month the
Speaker 1: results look promising, and this isn't the only study of
Speaker 1: the sort out there now. This is different than the
Speaker 1: young blood trial Ambrosia was running because for starters, half
Speaker 1: of the subjects in this study were given a placebo
Speaker 1: so they could compare results. None of the patients pay
Speaker 1: to participate, and the doctors there have been careful not
Speaker 1: to overstate the potential benefits to the patients. Increasingly, what
Speaker 1: I've heard is that researches are seeing age is basically
Speaker 1: accumulated damage to ourselves. So if you can find ways
Speaker 1: to slow down their damage or develop ways to repair
Speaker 1: the damage by extension, you could slow down the effects
Speaker 1: of aging, so that in turn could potentially mean that
Speaker 1: people end up living for longer. There's billions of dollars
Speaker 1: being spent on this already. Alphabet's Calico inhibition has raised
Speaker 1: two billion dollars to disrupt to death, and people like
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison have also spent money on
Speaker 1: startups that are trying to hold aging. A lot of
Speaker 1: these investors are basically looking at death as a problem
Speaker 1: to be solved. But for the scientists on the ground,
Speaker 1: or at least the ones I spoke to, most of
Speaker 1: these studies aren't tailored toward making the richest people in
Speaker 1: the world of forever or even live until there are
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty Olivia. I'm sure that will be disappointing
Speaker 1: for for some very wealthy investors who do want to
Speaker 1: live longer. But so if it's not about life extension,
Speaker 1: what is this about. This is really about trying to
Speaker 1: keep people active and healthier for longer. So we know
Speaker 1: that we've got our elderly population is dwarfing our young
Speaker 1: population at the moment, We've got underfunded health systems, and
Speaker 1: this rising problem where we're going to have a lot
Speaker 1: of elderly people who are suffering from diseases and it's
Speaker 1: going to be a burden on our health system. So
Speaker 1: what these companies are actually trying to achieve is to
Speaker 1: keep elderly people active, able and working for longer. And
Speaker 1: so when you're talking to these researchers. They don't talk
Speaker 1: about the lifespan of people. They actually refer to it
Speaker 1: as their health span. I do feel like when attention
Speaker 1: was paid to the claims of ambrosure health and a
Speaker 1: lot of cases it was ridicule that was kind of
Speaker 1: seen as a sort of classic moment of excess for
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. Yeah, exactly did people take it seriously? Do
Speaker 1: you think? Well, I think that's a really interesting question. Um.
Speaker 1: I feel like when you talk to people, there's lots
Speaker 1: of different people on the on the spectrum of regenerative medicine,
Speaker 1: and I kind of first approached the story and didn't
Speaker 1: really know a lot about it. So speaking to these
Speaker 1: researchers was surprising for me in terms of what I
Speaker 1: could find. But then there are other people you talk
Speaker 1: to who were like, oh, no, what ambrosia was doing
Speaker 1: wasn't even all that bad. It's a basic blood transfusion
Speaker 1: and they're trying to help people. It was just the
Speaker 1: way it was marketed that ran them into problems. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think before you started doing this digging that
Speaker 1: I that I really understood that it was it was
Speaker 1: an actual field of science, and I think that if anything,
Speaker 1: what we should learn from this company is how important
Speaker 1: it is for us to distinguish between what is science
Speaker 1: and what is science fiction in this space. So Olivia
Speaker 1: tell us more about Bruce and what happened to him
Speaker 1: after he received these transfusions. The thing with Bruce is
Speaker 1: that he's tried all these different alternative treatments and it's
Speaker 1: really hard to pinpoint what's what's actually helped him. Here.
Speaker 1: He's defied his doctor's predictions and he has been able
Speaker 1: to walk without the aid of crutches, he told me,
Speaker 1: which is pretty incredible given that he was told he'd
Speaker 1: never walk again. Um, but I need to emphasize that,
Speaker 1: and he agreed. Here there is no evidence that that
Speaker 1: stemmed from ambrosia or blood plasma transfusions. For Bruce, it's
Speaker 1: all a bit of a shame, really. He feels like
Speaker 1: GC overmarketed the treatment, overmarketed the company, and had it
Speaker 1: not been for all the hype around this and all
Speaker 1: the media reports and all the vampire blood transfusion claims,
Speaker 1: then the company might still be around and he may
Speaker 1: still be able to benefit from it. You must have
Speaker 1: been all together on three transfusions. Thousands of dollars do
Speaker 1: you feel that it was worth it. I don't regret
Speaker 1: having done it, and I would probably do it again.
Speaker 1: So that left me with just one last question, and
Speaker 1: just to set the record straight here, you've had three
Speaker 1: transfusions with Ambrosia health and do you feel at all immortal? Ahead,
Speaker 1: and that's it for this week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. If you have ever tried out an anti
Speaker 1: aging treatment, I'd love to hear your story. You can
Speaker 1: write to us at Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net or
Speaker 1: I'm on Twitter at liv Carvil and I'm at brad
Speaker 1: Stone and please help us spread the word about our
Speaker 1: new season by leaving us a rating or a review
Speaker 1: wherever you like to listen. This episode was produced by
Speaker 1: Peter get Kari and Lindsay Crutterwell. Our story editor was
Speaker 1: Anne vander May. Thank you also to Emily Busso, aki Ito,
Speaker 1: as well as Liz Smith, Magnus Henriksson, and Tofa for
Speaker 1: his Franchie Scallevi is head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see
Speaker 1: you next week.