Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist. We are returning with an episode about
Speaker 1: something was quite a hobby horse of ours for a while,
Speaker 1: the concept of biohacking. Matt off Air, we were looking
Speaker 1: through some of our files and you said.
Speaker 2: Trey Wick, Yeah, I remember, I remember this really well.
Speaker 2: This is around a time when maybe we were just
Speaker 2: getting hip to it, the use of ketamine specifically as
Speaker 2: a drug to treat PTSD and other, you know, other
Speaker 2: mental health issues. And you know, we were also looking
Speaker 2: around this time this twenty eighteen so looking at psilocybin
Speaker 2: and other psychoactive substances that can be super helpful with
Speaker 2: those things. And when we heard about what happened to
Speaker 2: Aaron Treywick, or at least what allegedly maybe happened to him, right,
Speaker 2: it was utterly fascinating. And yeah, this is this entire episode.
Speaker 2: It makes you wonder, right because I don't know how
Speaker 2: deeply we go into it, but maybe in just my
Speaker 2: personal weird mental travels thinking about what a sensory deprivation
Speaker 2: tank can actually do for the innerspace and then what
Speaker 2: happened to Aaron, I don't know, it's weird, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as you know, I'm a big fan of sensory
Speaker 1: deprivation in general, so I think this hit both of
Speaker 1: us on a personal level. Here we are, without further ado,
Speaker 1: from December twenty eighteen, the mysterious death of biohacker Aaron Treewick.
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 the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
Speaker 1: producer Paul Mission Control Deck, and most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 1: You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. I have a question for the
Speaker 1: table and for everyone listening to set off this episode.
Speaker 1: Here it goes, if you could, if you could enhance
Speaker 1: yourself through some sort of technological or even genetic means,
Speaker 1: what kind of thing would you, guys choose?
Speaker 4: I would want to spoiler?
Speaker 1: You would want to spoil it like as on audible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so I could run faster, I would cut
Speaker 4: down my wind resistance, so I'd wear a windbreaker and
Speaker 4: then have my spoiler. See, I would be unstoppable.
Speaker 2: Gotta gotta correct you here though that spoiler, and you
Speaker 2: tell me if I'm wrong about this. But I think
Speaker 2: that spoiler is to actually provide a tiny bit of drag,
Speaker 2: Isn't it to push their.
Speaker 4: I need some downforce or I'm a running sitch and
Speaker 4: that's what I'm looking for.
Speaker 2: Spoiler.
Speaker 1: Would it be mounted on like your posterior or your shoulders?
Speaker 4: But yes, it would be on both. Oh it would
Speaker 4: have dual spoilers, Oh my god, because surely where one
Speaker 4: is good, too is better?
Speaker 2: Dude, double double good.
Speaker 1: That's what a lot of mods think.
Speaker 2: Had some air vents and you're good to go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what about you met?
Speaker 2: For me, it would be something that would enhance my
Speaker 2: either vision or hearing capabilities. I think hearing would be
Speaker 2: a lot of fun, especially because I've got pretty bad
Speaker 2: hearing as of the moment due to those drums.
Speaker 4: You're really making me feel like I've squandered my choice.
Speaker 4: But I should have thought of this through.
Speaker 2: A little more.
Speaker 1: I guess I would want to live forever. You would
Speaker 1: want to live forever, I mean as your horses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get okay, totally.
Speaker 1: They are horses live forever with the option to kill myself.
Speaker 2: So somehow it's always on the table.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me about it.
Speaker 2: Somehow modify your cells to not die off in some.
Speaker 1: Way to prevent some of that inevitable decay. There's good
Speaker 1: and bad news, right. The good news is that in
Speaker 1: each of the things we described, we'll ask Paul off
Speaker 1: Air in each of the attributes we described. While we
Speaker 1: may not be able to get the full realization of
Speaker 1: our wishes, we have different types of technology that can
Speaker 1: can help us. We have the technology, to quote bionic Man,
Speaker 1: to build, for instance, a spoiler hoodie right or spoiler slacks.
Speaker 1: We have hearing technology that can improve someone's natural hearing.
Speaker 1: We do have some anti aging stuff, but that's probably
Speaker 1: more controversial. It's weird because we're talking today sort of
Speaker 1: about do it yourself medicine. DIY medicine and human experimentation
Speaker 1: has been historically speaking, one of the most controversial issues
Speaker 1: is this realm. The controversy continues in the modern day.
Speaker 1: Here in twenty eighteen, because recent medical innovations and breakthroughs
Speaker 1: have allowed for affordable, if super risky, self experimentation, we
Speaker 1: have officially entered the age of do it yourself biology.
Speaker 1: There's sometimes referred to as biohacking. Next question, what the
Speaker 1: hell is that?
Speaker 4: Well, this one's also interesting because the human experimentation that
Speaker 4: we're talking about historically has often been against people's will,
Speaker 4: and this enters this adds another angle to it. It's
Speaker 4: almost like assisted suicide, where it's like, this is my
Speaker 4: body do this to me? I would like to do
Speaker 4: this to myself. So who is the onus of responsibility
Speaker 4: on it? On the individual doing it? Are on the
Speaker 4: people that are secretly doing this research and not going
Speaker 4: through the proper channels, And we'll get to that right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so the concept of biohacking itself has to
Speaker 2: do with any kind of activity that exploits genetic material.
Speaker 2: This is going to be like humans in their genetic
Speaker 2: material or animals, but in the most cases with the
Speaker 2: DIY stuff, it's on yourself. So it's human genetic material
Speaker 2: and you're experimenting with this stuff without regard to whatever
Speaker 2: the accepted standards are, like what the FDA might say.
Speaker 2: And this is generally done for either these kind of
Speaker 2: self startup kind of ventures, or for just an individual,
Speaker 2: or sometimes even for criminal purposes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what you will hear alarmist reporting. They'll say
Speaker 1: these these crazy kids, these insane biohackers, are going to
Speaker 1: change something about themselves or potentially in the future, something
Speaker 1: about their unwitting victims. And this sounds like it's the
Speaker 1: stuff of science fiction, but it is real to some degree,
Speaker 1: and it's related to other discipline. You'll hear other words
Speaker 1: described in the same conversations. There's grinding, the practice of
Speaker 1: installing technological devices in the human body, such as magnetic sensors.
Speaker 1: I think with talked about that on the show previously.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, a lot of times you'll hear the term
Speaker 2: what where when dealing with these things.
Speaker 1: And it's also related to something called nutrient genomics. If
Speaker 1: you heard about this one.
Speaker 2: This one I had not.
Speaker 1: So it's the use of it's leveraging genetic information to
Speaker 1: determine effects of nutrition and how the foods you intake
Speaker 1: and the substances you intake can affect a change in
Speaker 1: your biology. Of course, neither grinding nor nutrient genomics are
Speaker 1: particularly new. People have been installing medical devices and human
Speaker 1: bodies for decades and decades and decades. If you're listening
Speaker 1: to this, you have probably at some point met someone
Speaker 1: who had a pacemaker. Yeah, And on the subject in
Speaker 1: nutrient genomics. It's really easy to say, Hey, isn't that
Speaker 1: just you know, a diet, yeah, just like eat better?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Or are we talking about like some of these Alex
Speaker 4: Jones remedies you know, yeah? Whatever? Ingesting? Then at what
Speaker 4: point does something go from the realm of food to
Speaker 4: the realm of drugs? You know what I mean? It's
Speaker 4: like a supplement versus a medication.
Speaker 2: This is something my wife has been talking with me
Speaker 2: recently because she follows someone called the medical Medium. Who
Speaker 2: is this guy who is I guess a nutritionist, but
Speaker 2: he also claims the phrase medical medium. He claims to
Speaker 2: be able to walk up to someone and basically say
Speaker 2: what their ailments are without knowing anything about them, and.
Speaker 4: He guess their age and weight too.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming it sounds like a parlor trick.
Speaker 1: And a jar thing pretty much, but with like blood
Speaker 1: and organs.
Speaker 2: It feels like some kind of cold reading, right, That's
Speaker 2: what I immediately, That's what triggers in me when I
Speaker 2: hear it. But the guy didn't. I don't know if
Speaker 2: he invented it, but he popularized this thing that is
Speaker 2: very similar to neutrogenomics, where it's oh, what is it
Speaker 2: celery juice that has become I guess all the rage
Speaker 2: in wealthy arts of America. Or you just drink celery
Speaker 2: juice all day long and it's going to change your
Speaker 2: body somehow. I don't know.
Speaker 4: Do they sell it at Whole Foods? Do you have
Speaker 4: to juice it yourself?
Speaker 2: It was What Diana told me is that it was
Speaker 2: sold out of Whole Foods for a while there because
Speaker 2: this guy popularized it so hard.
Speaker 4: So you can't find celery anymore. There's a big run
Speaker 4: on cellar.
Speaker 1: There's a run on celery deally, you would want to
Speaker 1: juice it yourself.
Speaker 2: It's fresh.
Speaker 1: Xactly did you eat? Somebody checked me on this. But
Speaker 1: side note, it is more expensive for your body calorically
Speaker 1: speaking to consume celery. Uh, like you're losing calories. This
Speaker 1: is when you eat them.
Speaker 2: This is my belief because I've heard that too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's true.
Speaker 1: All right, So let us know celery fanatics in the crowd,
Speaker 1: and if you are a celery juice enthusiast, tell us
Speaker 1: about your nutri genomic journey. This stuff parallels closely with
Speaker 1: a philosophy known as transhumanism, the idea that through our
Speaker 1: own gut gumption technology and can do it. Vanis can
Speaker 1: improve ourselves and become something that transcends the idea of
Speaker 1: homo sapien.
Speaker 2: Love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a cool idea. It's fraught with problems. We've
Speaker 1: talked before about the Gadiga possibility. We've talked before about how,
Speaker 1: based on the way the world works now economically speaking,
Speaker 1: the first people who would become truly transhuman would likely
Speaker 1: be very, very wealthy people, or people who are transformed
Speaker 1: into weapons of war. Unfortunately, that's just how how things look.
Speaker 1: But our story today takes place in this murky world
Speaker 1: of biohacking, of transhumanism. But this isn't exactly a dive
Speaker 1: into the ethical complications of unsupervised self experimentation. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's a little more true crime than tech. It's a
Speaker 1: little more murder than medicine. It's time to meet Aaron Treywick.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 4: Aaron Treywick was born December nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine. He
Speaker 4: was a transhumanism activist and also the CEO of a
Speaker 4: company called Ascendance Biomedical, which aimed to make new, revolutionary
Speaker 4: and affordable gene therapies capable of treating previously incurable afflictions
Speaker 4: let's call them like herpes or HIV, things that medicine
Speaker 4: has yet to figure out a solution for that. We
Speaker 4: just people who have them. They live with them, you know,
Speaker 4: for the rest.
Speaker 1: Of their lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the emphasis there is on cure yea, right, so
Speaker 1: not treatment not treatment. So most many diseases or afflictions
Speaker 1: have very effective treatment regimens.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They can repress the symptoms or the consequences of a condition,
Speaker 1: but they will not cure it, which works out great
Speaker 1: for pharmaceutical companies. And I'm not saying that that's what
Speaker 1: they want to happen. But you know, somebody paying you
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars a month for the rest of their life,
Speaker 1: that's a guaranteed income stream.
Speaker 4: We've kicked this old chestnut down the street many a time, right,
Speaker 4: where it's like, does it benefit anyone that's making money
Speaker 4: off of treatment to cure something? Are people actively holding
Speaker 4: back said cure? I mean, it's it's a question that
Speaker 4: we ask all the time, and I don't think we've
Speaker 4: seen definitive proof that yes, that's definitely happening, but it
Speaker 4: sure makes sense.
Speaker 1: There's definitely motivation there and it's true that drugs. Making
Speaker 1: drugs here in the US is a labor intensive, very
Speaker 1: very difficult process, lots of time, lots of time, not
Speaker 1: just because it's a needle in the haystack, and the
Speaker 1: haystack is the human body, which we still don't fully understand,
Speaker 1: but also because of the bureaucratic oversight that's required, and
Speaker 1: that comes into play here later. So Treywick was born
Speaker 1: in DC. He lived in Alabama. He graduated with a
Speaker 1: degree in interdisciplinary studies, which is sort of just it's
Speaker 1: a very customizable degree, I guess is a good way
Speaker 1: to put it. So interdisciplinary studies will have you encountering
Speaker 1: your basic prerecs or your core classes, the one oh ones,
Speaker 1: the eleven oh ones, and then branching out into stuff
Speaker 1: that interest you more like the intersection between history and
Speaker 1: biology or so on. Trewick had no clinical science background whatsoever,
Speaker 1: no formal training, no research experience, and critics were quick
Speaker 1: to point this out. His critics and opponents also hated
Speaker 1: his frequent use of the C word or cure because
Speaker 1: they felt it was essentially begging for increased scrutiny and
Speaker 1: then possible litigation or legal action from the FDA, the
Speaker 1: Food and Drug Administration. His first big splash into the
Speaker 1: world of transhumanism and biohacking came about in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: when he worked with an outfit called the Global Health
Speaker 1: Span Policy Institute, a nonprofit advocating investment in unorthodox, radical
Speaker 1: approaches to anti aging treatments. There's a story here, and
Speaker 1: may it may bias some of us against Treywick, but
Speaker 1: it is important to know it's completely true. He got
Speaker 1: hired because the company was run by his adoptive cousin,
Speaker 1: a person named Edwina Rogers. She was a lobbyist, former
Speaker 1: advisor to w Bush.
Speaker 2: Because just really fast, because Trewick was not his given name.
Speaker 2: He was adopted by the Trewick family.
Speaker 1: That is correct, Yeah, he was adopted by the Trewick family,
Speaker 1: and he's not a blood relation to Rogers. So he
Speaker 1: graduates from college and he calls Rogers and asks for
Speaker 1: some career advice. She says, well, what are you interested in?
Speaker 1: And one of the topics that came up was the
Speaker 1: idea of life extension, just another way to package anti aging.
Speaker 1: That's a passion she shared with him. And you know,
Speaker 1: by the time you get toward the end of your
Speaker 1: individual's story. Most people are very interested in life extension
Speaker 1: or anti aging. She decided to start an organization dedicated
Speaker 1: to expanding healthy human lifetimes. So she founded this GHPI,
Speaker 1: and then she installed Treywick as the CEO. She also in,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to be a good family member. She
Speaker 1: also helped him move into the house that she and
Speaker 1: her husband shared in Washington, d c. Three weeks into
Speaker 1: his stay, things started to go south. Treywick told her
Speaker 1: husband told Roger's husband, a mister Neemeyer, that after college
Speaker 1: he had lived in a tantric sex house in Colorado,
Speaker 1: and he started talking about his experience there. Mister Niemeyer
Speaker 1: was not happy or impressed, and we have a quote
Speaker 1: from him about his opinion of Aaron Treywick.
Speaker 2: He had delusions that women wanted him. He'd be talking
Speaker 2: with them and promising them meetings with senators, and this
Speaker 2: is outside of the quote. He also said that at
Speaker 2: one point mister Treywick referred to the women he slept
Speaker 2: with as my skanks.
Speaker 1: Gross all class, all class. So Rogers realized fairly quickly
Speaker 1: into this that Treywick was lying to both her and
Speaker 1: her husband Treywick was intercepting professional correspondence that was meant
Speaker 1: for Rogers, and at least once he took an airplane
Speaker 1: ticket and a conference invitation on her behalf. So they
Speaker 1: said we want you to come to this conference. He said, oh,
Speaker 1: they must be me or I want to go. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just a little bit of a credit hog. And
Speaker 1: one night in late March, when Rogers' husband was out
Speaker 1: of town, Treywick attempted to force his way into her
Speaker 1: bedroom at two in the morning. This was one of
Speaker 1: the last straws. Rogers fires him on July seventeenth, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: He continues to tell people he works at the nonprofit
Speaker 1: for about a year after and then he goes on
Speaker 1: to found what you had mentioned earlier, nol A Sentence
Speaker 1: Biomedical in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right. And this organization had a mission and
Speaker 4: it was quote to make cutting edge biomedical technologies available
Speaker 4: for everyone. And there was of course a controversy from
Speaker 4: the start. As you might imagine, Ascendance aimed to save
Speaker 4: money by avoiding the rigor and expense of clinical trials,
Speaker 4: those pesky clinical trials and FDA oversight that seems highly problematic,
Speaker 4: doesn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And again it gets back to that whole idea
Speaker 2: of those trials. That process is crazy, crazy expensive and
Speaker 2: also takes a ton of time. Both of those are
Speaker 2: directly linked. And according to Treywick, he said that this
Speaker 2: kind of getting around these regulations is not illegal. And
Speaker 2: here's a quote.
Speaker 1: There are breakthroughs in the world that we can actually
Speaker 1: bring to market in a way that wouldn't require us
Speaker 1: to butt up against the FDA's walls, but instead to
Speaker 1: walk around them. Oh and what they're talking about, essentially
Speaker 1: is self experimentation. Self experimentation is strongly discouraged by agencies
Speaker 1: like the FDA, but it's difficult for regulators to intervene
Speaker 1: unless you are using a drug that is already a
Speaker 1: schedule drug. You know, unless you're saying I want to
Speaker 1: figure out the benefits of heroin or MDMA, they can't
Speaker 1: really prosecute you. You know, if you say, I'm going
Speaker 1: to live on a diet of celery juice and buttermilk
Speaker 1: just for three months and just see what happens to
Speaker 1: my body and wheat grass and wheat grass very important component,
Speaker 1: they can't stop you because it comes to a matter
Speaker 1: of personal liberty. Right.
Speaker 4: But my question is like this guy sort of casts
Speaker 4: himself as being at the forefront of this, you know,
Speaker 4: self discovery, self experimentation field, but it seems here that
Speaker 4: he's almost using this as like a work around for
Speaker 4: his company, right, so he doesn't actually have to spend
Speaker 4: the money that it takes to do the research and
Speaker 4: to do the I mean, you know, you can say
Speaker 4: what you will about the FDA and all on how
Speaker 4: long or you know, that approval process takes. But this
Speaker 4: does not seem magnanimous in the way that it's being
Speaker 4: discussed here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a good point. What are the true
Speaker 1: motives versus the stated motives here? And equally important, what
Speaker 1: did a sentence Biomedical actually do? We'll tell you after
Speaker 1: a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 2: And we're back now. I think something that sets Ascendance
Speaker 2: apart as well as Aaron Treywick is kind of the
Speaker 2: showmanship that he had and some of the more radical
Speaker 2: things that he was willing to do in front of
Speaker 2: a live crowd.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In October twenty seventeen, the company Ascendanced Biomedical shared a
Speaker 1: live broadcast over the Internet airwaves, Facebook specifically, and it
Speaker 1: featured Treywick and one of his colleague slash associates, a
Speaker 1: guy named Tristan Roberts. Tristan Roberts had HIV and he
Speaker 1: injected himself with an untested experimental gene therapy. This was
Speaker 1: presented as someone saying, let's get rid of this unnecessary
Speaker 1: red tape holding us back. Tristan in the video does say,
Speaker 1: you know, he indicates that he has consented to this.
Speaker 1: It is his choice, it's his body, so legally, there's
Speaker 1: not really too much you can do about it unless
Speaker 1: you could prove the guy was coerced. But then they
Speaker 1: had another another similar experiment that involved Treywick himself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he injected himself with something that he referred to
Speaker 2: as research compound, and in a later interview he referred
Speaker 2: to this as a treatment and another term bound to
Speaker 2: catch the unwanted attention of that old FDA. And it
Speaker 2: turned out that this was, at least from everything I've read,
Speaker 2: a herpes treatment, right, that's right, And you know, these
Speaker 2: both of these actions feel very radical to me personally. Sure,
Speaker 2: going on a live stream to inject yourself and or
Speaker 2: your associate to inject himself with something on and it's
Speaker 2: gene therapy of all things.
Speaker 1: Well, that's also that's part of the strange dissonance in
Speaker 1: the guy's character that we're talking about. He publicly compared
Speaker 1: himself to Jonas Salk and several other like Louis Pasteur,
Speaker 1: several other great scientists of note, great innovators of medicine,
Speaker 1: self experimentation, though at what point does it become just
Speaker 1: performance right spectacle? So it's not a surprise that he
Speaker 1: was a controversial figure in the transhumanism or biohacking community.
Speaker 1: His critics there were many saw him as little more
Speaker 1: than a smooth talking showman, prone to over promising and
Speaker 1: rushing headlong into these deadline that were just cartoonish without
Speaker 1: realizing the extent of research and science that was required
Speaker 1: to accomplish the goals. His friend Tristan Roberts, who we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, put it this way. He has a great
Speaker 1: quote about this.
Speaker 4: He seems to promise anything to everyone who was looking
Speaker 4: for something. He was actually developing some of the things
Speaker 4: he was saying he was developing. On the other hand,
Speaker 4: it did seem like he would take any money that
Speaker 4: people handed him with no regard for executing.
Speaker 1: And here's a question, let's stop for a tick here.
Speaker 1: Why are all these people speaking of Aaron Treewick in
Speaker 1: the past tense? Well, it's because he is dead.
Speaker 2: That's correct. On April twenty ninth, twenty eighteen, the body
Speaker 2: of Aaron Treewick was discovered floating in a sensory deprivation
Speaker 2: tank at soul Ex Float Spa in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: And a century deprivation tank is a meditative, mildly therapeutic
Speaker 1: thing where where you float with minimal clothing or nude
Speaker 1: in a body of water or fluid salty water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that so that you can float similar like dead
Speaker 1: sea level and you are left alone with your thoughts. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's usually dark, quiet and just you. Your mind is
Speaker 2: released a bit from its body.
Speaker 4: And some people it would cause serious anxiety. For me
Speaker 4: being one of that, just the idea of this does
Speaker 4: not appeal to me. But our cohort, Robert Lamb from
Speaker 4: Stuff to Blow your Mind enjoys them and does them
Speaker 4: que And some people say that it's almost a psychedelic
Speaker 4: experience where you feel you see things behind your eyelids
Speaker 4: and the act of the absolute lack of any sound
Speaker 4: or sight creates these very intense kind of visions or whatever.
Speaker 1: And the metro ped found him right after. There was
Speaker 1: a nine to one one call where.
Speaker 2: I believe the.
Speaker 1: I believe he was in the capsule or you know,
Speaker 1: in the contraption for long enough. He was in there
Speaker 1: longer than he was supposed to be, and after a
Speaker 1: certain point, the capsule automatically drains of the fluid. Is
Speaker 1: that correct?
Speaker 2: Correct? Yeah, And it's in there on purpose, just to
Speaker 2: make sure nothing's wrong, and it also lets you know that, hey,
Speaker 2: your session's over. Yeah, we have a whole story here.
Speaker 2: But he was found unconscious inside this float tank and
Speaker 2: then he was pronounced dead at eleven thirty one am
Speaker 2: that day, So there's a bit of a story here.
Speaker 2: Apparently Treywick scheduled the same day float and he scheduled
Speaker 2: at for nine am in the morning. He showed up
Speaker 2: about twenty twenty five minutes late. Then he got in there,
Speaker 2: he signed the standard waiver, and then the sole ex
Speaker 2: co owner I can't say the name, put eddruman Visiri
Speaker 2: there you go, arrived at about ten forty nine. So
Speaker 2: if it's an hour long session, he shows up about
Speaker 2: twenty minutes late, that puts it about around twenty five
Speaker 2: to thirty minutes after the session should be ending for Treywick,
Speaker 2: and the co owner asks, like, why is somebody still
Speaker 2: in this floatroom? It was scheduled for this time, there's
Speaker 2: someone still in there. And it became pretty clear that
Speaker 2: something was going wrong, and they realized that the door
Speaker 2: to Treywick's room was a jar. And this is not
Speaker 2: something that would generally happen when you're in one of
Speaker 2: these sessions. Again, you want it to be quiet, you
Speaker 2: want to be alone. Generally, someone who's going to get
Speaker 2: in one of these gets nude or at least close
Speaker 2: to nude, so they want a bit of privacy. The
Speaker 2: door was a jar that they noticed that, and it
Speaker 2: was strange, right, not the tank lid, but the door
Speaker 2: to the room that has the tank in it, right,
Speaker 2: And it's like an individual tank in each room exactly.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: The room itself was also dark. There were no lights on,
Speaker 2: and it's those sensor lights where if someone would have
Speaker 2: gotten out of the tank even opened the door to
Speaker 2: the tank, probably that movement would have caused the lights
Speaker 2: to turn on. But it was dark. And then they
Speaker 2: opened the tank's lid and they saw him in there,
Speaker 2: and he was unconscious. But again, like you said, Ben,
Speaker 2: it had already been drained by that point.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, So at first they said, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't have any evidence to suggest foul play. One of
Speaker 1: Trewick's cousins told The New York Times that police had
Speaker 1: found ketamine in Aaron Treewick's belonging, specifically in his pockets.
Speaker 1: This is important because of what the autopsy ascertained.
Speaker 4: So Bloomberg News published some details of the autopsy findings
Speaker 4: and here's what they had to say. Aaron Trewick, for toom,
Speaker 4: is the controversial twenty eight year old biohacker who was
Speaker 4: found dead in this sensory derivation tank. Accidentally drowned and
Speaker 4: he had ketamine in his system. The autopsy report that
Speaker 4: was given to Bloomberg showed that that was the cause
Speaker 4: of death, was an accidental drowning, and they kind of
Speaker 4: vaguely blame kenemy, which is an anesthetic and it's used
Speaker 4: for recreation. But it's not like he overdosed on the drug.
Speaker 4: He was just under the influence of the drug and
Speaker 4: supposedly drowned as a result of being intoxicated and not
Speaker 4: having his wits about him. I suppose is that which
Speaker 4: you guys took away from this as well.
Speaker 2: Essentially, yes, but also it should just be noted here
Speaker 2: while we're still in the investigation and discovery phase, that
Speaker 2: the Metro police that discovered him said there didn't seem
Speaker 2: to be any foul play involved in his death.
Speaker 1: Yes, And here's where the story takes a turn. You see,
Speaker 1: despite the findings of the autopsy that eventually emerged, despite
Speaker 1: the statements of the police department at the time, many people,
Speaker 1: both supporters and critics, as well as bitter rivals and enemies,
Speaker 1: thought there was much much more to the story of
Speaker 1: what really happened. In that sense, Redeprivation Tank on April
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, and we'll dive into that after a word
Speaker 1: from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: We have a couple of big questions here that, as
Speaker 2: Ben said right before the break, have been posed by
Speaker 2: everyone from his best friends to his most bitter enemies.
Speaker 2: And the first one is did Aaron Treywick in some
Speaker 2: way fake his death?
Speaker 4: Did?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Have I ever mentioned this word on this show before?
Speaker 1: Surely I have the technical term for when somebody fakes
Speaker 1: their own death, say it pseudo. Side's a it's a
Speaker 1: real thing. Pseudo. Side that's interesting is that it sounds
Speaker 1: like it could be. But yeah, just the word pseudo
Speaker 1: and then side sort of like regicide is death of
Speaker 1: a king, fratricide, killing of a brother, right or a relation?
Speaker 1: So did Also there's this great book called Going off
Speaker 1: the Grid, I think playing dead, and it's about how
Speaker 1: difficult it is to successfully commit pseudicide.
Speaker 2: An author we still haven't interviewed.
Speaker 1: No, but we have talked about We have talked with
Speaker 1: this author about interviewing them. I'm just embarrassed to follow
Speaker 1: up now, I.
Speaker 2: Know how long has it been, like three years old?
Speaker 1: Oh man, So how are you doing? We'll ask her
Speaker 1: about her newer books. Okay, so what happened here? We
Speaker 1: found this in a brilliant New York Times article that
Speaker 1: has one of my favorite quotes that doesn't really have
Speaker 1: anything to do with this situation. David Ishi is someone
Speaker 1: who was familiar with trey Wick's work. He first became
Speaker 1: interested in genetic manipulation because he breeds dogs, and in
Speaker 1: a quote he's referring to Treywick, he says a lot
Speaker 1: of people want to go fast. Everybody who's new thinks
Speaker 1: they're going to have a pet dragon in six weeks.
Speaker 1: But biology beats you down and you realize, okay, this
Speaker 1: is going to take way longer than I expect. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to make dogs glow, you know, and that's
Speaker 1: taken years.
Speaker 4: It's a real glow, like like have shiny coats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, give them phosphor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's all he wanted. That would have been incredible,
Speaker 2: David she.
Speaker 1: It seems like a pretty reasonable risk.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, they refer to him as a researcher who
Speaker 2: worked at ascendants to David She, So I'm not sure
Speaker 2: how much association he actually had. That's what the New
Speaker 2: York Times says, you know, who knows exactly. But apparently
Speaker 2: upon hearing this guy who's trying to make dogs glow,
Speaker 2: heard that, you know, Trey Wick had he had died,
Speaker 2: and his first thought was that perhaps he had Aaron
Speaker 2: had somehow faked it and then run off with all
Speaker 2: the money that he'd been given by clients. Which if
Speaker 2: that's his first thought, it kind of tells you depending
Speaker 2: on how closely this guy worked with Treewick, he kind
Speaker 2: of tells you something about Treewick. And then another person,
Speaker 2: Tristan Roberts, who we heard from before, said, let's see,
Speaker 2: he was a biohacker who worked with a Sentence. He
Speaker 2: thought the same thing. And he even says that perhaps
Speaker 2: the body was just a very convincing clone. He joked
Speaker 2: about it after hearing about Aaron Trewick ouch.
Speaker 1: And then there's the other possibility. This goes back to
Speaker 1: that door slightly. Ajar was Aaron Treewick murdered?
Speaker 4: Hmm, okay, so New York Times reported that this person,
Speaker 4: Kelly Martin, who was one of the founders of a
Speaker 4: Sentence Biomedical, had her own theory about the whole situation,
Speaker 4: and it hinted at a different conspiracy. And here's a quote.
Speaker 4: There's speculation if you watch Aaron's last video, that he
Speaker 4: was going to provide disruptive technology that would upend big pharma.
Speaker 4: And also she goes on quote he said that we
Speaker 4: were close to coming up with something that was pretty revolutionary.
Speaker 4: It is interesting, and it seems like the kind of
Speaker 4: claims this dude would have been known to make.
Speaker 1: That's the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And it's so vague, but it's big. It's huge.
Speaker 2: It's exciting.
Speaker 1: I can tell you because we have a rapport.
Speaker 4: I mean everything we know about this guy up to
Speaker 4: this point makes me see him as kind of like
Speaker 4: one of these kind of fake it till you make
Speaker 4: it tech bro startup guys, you know, who just kind
Speaker 4: of like talk a big game and the hopes people
Speaker 4: will throw money at them, and then they kind of
Speaker 4: figure it out as they go along, you know. I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm not saying he didn't have some smart ideas or
Speaker 4: wasn't working on some interesting stuff, but I just it
Speaker 4: doesn't scream, you know, integrity, integrity. Thanks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So let's let's play the reindeer games for a
Speaker 1: little bit longer and say let's say, okay, what if,
Speaker 1: just as a thought experiment, what if this was a
Speaker 1: case of homicide.
Speaker 4: It is easy to.
Speaker 1: Make someone drowned, you know, and it's not impossible to
Speaker 1: make it look like an accident. So for people who
Speaker 1: believe that Aaron Trewick was murdered, they will raise several
Speaker 1: different once called them species of suspects and their motivations.
Speaker 1: First off is the FDA. We have a quote from
Speaker 1: a guy with a really cool name, Zultan istvan.
Speaker 4: Rultan, like the like the machine is Sultan. Yeah, wasn't
Speaker 4: that his name wasn't he the great Zultan.
Speaker 1: That's amazing zultan Istvan. He's a futurist who at the
Speaker 1: time he's quoted, he was a Libertarian candidate for the
Speaker 1: governor of California and he was talking to the Independent,
Speaker 1: just great paper out of the UK. I immediately thought
Speaker 1: of an FDA conspiracy theory when I heard that Aaron
Speaker 1: was found dead. Our medical system is not one to
Speaker 1: fined cures, but to keep people alive as long as
Speaker 1: possible while they're sick, to make money off of them.
Speaker 1: And then Tristan Roberts had a quote that also echoes
Speaker 1: sort of the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he said, I have always felt that the threat
Speaker 2: from humans profiting off the status quo was greater than
Speaker 2: the experimental therapies themselves. So as though the outside forces
Speaker 2: that control the current medical situation were more dangerous than
Speaker 2: the things that were being injected into yourself on a livestream. Right,
Speaker 2: so interesting.
Speaker 1: The idea here is the gist of it, right, is
Speaker 1: that Treywick is too dangerous or disruptive to the existing
Speaker 1: status quo of medicine and money. And in the case
Speaker 1: of the FDA, the idea is that he was murdered
Speaker 1: because he was threatening the FDA's monopoly on drug approvals
Speaker 1: and clinical trials. And it's actually, I don't want to
Speaker 1: sound insane here, but it's actually pretty difficult to get
Speaker 1: approval for any kind of clinical trial. Back when I
Speaker 1: was trying to buy a transcranial direct current simulation device, yeah,
Speaker 1: you had to jump through a lot of hoops just
Speaker 1: to even get on the phone with someone who would
Speaker 1: sell them. And I was beating my head against this.
Speaker 1: So I can see the appeal of biohacking. You can
Speaker 1: also find some great forms online with instructions to build
Speaker 1: your own transcranial simulation device, but nowadays, luckily well it's
Speaker 1: still kind of gray market. You can buy one as bad.
Speaker 1: Long term effects on your IQ though, so far as
Speaker 1: we know.
Speaker 4: Are what are the positive qualities of this thing?
Speaker 1: It puts you in. It creates that experience of being
Speaker 1: in the zone. You know, have you ever been, for instance,
Speaker 1: playing music and.
Speaker 4: Like a flow state or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it puts you. It puts you in a flow state,
Speaker 1: and it will enhance various cognitive abilities at least on
Speaker 1: the short.
Speaker 2: Term, but until it rips them away from you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but is it a flowers for Alphere's there's not
Speaker 1: very good publicized long term studies of the effects.
Speaker 4: And I imagine that would be the case. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean, even with FDA trial, it seems like there's
Speaker 4: so many medications that we don't fully understand the long, long,
Speaker 4: long term effects of sure, even if they've gone through
Speaker 4: the proper trial. So I would imagine with some of
Speaker 4: these genetic enhancements or these genetic therapies or whatever, even
Speaker 4: if they did fix something up front, who knows if
Speaker 4: the problem they caused down the line maybe didn't outweigh
Speaker 4: the positive thing they did, you.
Speaker 1: Know, and you know big Pharm will show up later
Speaker 1: in this podcast. But we also should make a point
Speaker 1: that there's some corruption in those FDA trials. If p
Speaker 1: Iiser really wants to get something through, the FDA will
Speaker 1: probably let it happen.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, with all the opiate epidemic stuf we've
Speaker 4: been talking about, and they just now approved an opiate
Speaker 4: that's like fifty times more potent than oxycontent or something
Speaker 4: like that, or it was something like that. I mean,
Speaker 4: not that number exactly, I don't quote me on that,
Speaker 4: but it was significantly more powerful and concentrated and they're
Speaker 4: just like, yeah, it's fine, Yeah, put it out there.
Speaker 4: This didn't like cause us like a huge problem before.
Speaker 1: You know, kids are too hyper. Maybe we should just
Speaker 1: give them, you know, opiates for children.
Speaker 4: Right, the opiate of the masses, right.
Speaker 1: The opiate of the elementary school classes. Right, you go, then,
Speaker 1: my man, Well, uh, speaking of the FDA, right, they
Speaker 1: refuse to comment on the conspiratorial claims. It's not a
Speaker 1: surprise that they didn't have someone come out and say, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: we know there's been a lot of talk about us
Speaker 1: hunting and killing biohackers. We just want to say that specifically,
Speaker 1: we didn't do Aaron Treywick because that sounds really sketchy.
Speaker 1: So instead, one of their spokespeople pointed to a web
Speaker 1: page that the federal agency published shortly after Tristan Roberts
Speaker 1: injected himself with that attempt at an HIV cre.
Speaker 4: But the FDA does have a position on this. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, it's it's a little bit of kind of showmanship,
Speaker 4: kind of an almost snake oil salesmanship as well, when
Speaker 4: he says, oh, no, it's fine, this isn't actually illegal.
Speaker 4: But my question at the top of the show was, Yeah,
Speaker 4: maybe it's not illegal for an individual to try whatever
Speaker 4: method of treatment they would like on theirselfs, whether it
Speaker 4: be some kind of you know, herbal remedy or injecting
Speaker 4: something that's given to them into their body. But at
Speaker 4: the same time, it's illegal to take illegal drugs. So
Speaker 4: that's obviously that argument doesn't always hold up, does it.
Speaker 4: We can't do whatever we want with our bodies, can we? Anyway?
Speaker 4: Point being, that's his argument is that whatever an individual
Speaker 4: wants to do to their body is okay as long
Speaker 4: as that individual gives consent for them to do it.
Speaker 4: The FDA sees it a little differently. This is what
Speaker 4: they say. FDA is aware that gene therapy products intended
Speaker 4: for self administration and do it yourself products or kits
Speaker 4: rather to produce gene therapies for self administration, are being
Speaker 4: made available to the public the sale of these products.
Speaker 4: The sale of these products is against the law. FDA
Speaker 4: is concerned about the safe deep risks involved. Consumers are
Speaker 4: cautioned to make sure that any gene therapy they're using
Speaker 4: they're considering using, has either been approved by FDA or
Speaker 4: is being studied under appropriate regulatory oversight. As we know
Speaker 4: the whole point behind this guy's company was to avoid
Speaker 4: regulatory oversight of any kind, to walk around to circumvent
Speaker 4: it using this argument of it's my body, I'll do
Speaker 4: what I want.
Speaker 1: But we know that that doesn't really hold up, and
Speaker 1: it's not your body as soon as you start selling
Speaker 1: it to other people exactly so it doesn't ring true.
Speaker 1: And then there's the other specie or the related conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory about this that concerns Big Pharma, either operating independently
Speaker 1: or in cooperation with the FDA, and it's pretty much
Speaker 1: the same thing, but they mad live it a little
Speaker 1: and they just switch out FDA for Big Pharma. However,
Speaker 1: there's some pretty significant problems with both of these theories.
Speaker 1: First and for most, multiple people will say that Aaron
Speaker 1: Treywick was much more of a glad hander in a
Speaker 1: publicity hound than you know, someone doing the actual work.
Speaker 1: We've all met people like this, you know. One of
Speaker 1: the sayings I like to throw around is everybody wants
Speaker 1: to eat, no one wants to cook. It's pretty calmon like.
Speaker 1: If you've ever done group work in college, you've probably
Speaker 1: run into a situation where there might be one person
Speaker 1: who's just not just doesn't seem to care, you know,
Speaker 1: but you all get graded accordingly, and your professors, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I hope they would be understanding. But I've
Speaker 1: been in like I've been in college where that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff happens. And Treywick, according to his critics, again
Speaker 1: this is the view of his critics, was someone who
Speaker 1: was very anxious to take credit for things they didn't
Speaker 1: actually do right and to short change the people, his scientists,
Speaker 1: his contractors is Tristan Roberts and so on, and then
Speaker 1: go on the publicity tours, interview circuits and what have you.
Speaker 1: But if he was that the thing is, if the
Speaker 1: critics are right, and if he was one of those
Speaker 1: types of people, murdering him would not solve any of
Speaker 1: the problems for the FDA or Big Pharma, because the
Speaker 1: actual people doing the work and creating these genetic manipulation
Speaker 1: substances would just continue to work, and they, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a brutal but possibly valid argument that they might
Speaker 1: do better work once trey Wick was no longer at
Speaker 1: the top and pushing them toward these deadlines that made
Speaker 1: them cut corners. And then secondly, I don't know, this
Speaker 1: is something that feels weird to me about this. Why
Speaker 1: would you engineer a death through ketamine? Like, couldn't you
Speaker 1: have an accent, couldn't you have a car accident, couldn't
Speaker 1: you have something that looks like a heart attack.
Speaker 2: Well, in a way, this was an accidental death, right Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: at least whether there's ketamine or not, the drowning could
Speaker 2: have occurred.
Speaker 4: I've heard ketamine is a pretty all encompassing, intense situation
Speaker 4: where you feel like you're outside of your body and
Speaker 4: it's a whole dissociative. I believe the type of drug is,
Speaker 4: so I could imagine that it Taking it and being
Speaker 4: submerged in a situation like that might not be the
Speaker 4: smartest idea.
Speaker 2: Although I I hear that it is a common thing
Speaker 2: to take something that would provide some form of hallucinogenic
Speaker 2: effects while in one of.
Speaker 1: These sure tmt LSD.
Speaker 4: But that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I've never thought that as being as that's what they
Speaker 1: call it a K hole, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I've never I've definitely never messed with
Speaker 4: anything like that before, but i've you know, it's been
Speaker 4: described in movies. It's a club drug in the UK.
Speaker 4: It's very popular. People take it and go to raves
Speaker 4: and stuff. But I don't understand how that would work
Speaker 4: if it's a tranquilizer.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a horse tranquilizer.
Speaker 2: Use for animals. Yeah, but to your to your point, Ben,
Speaker 2: everything you've been saying here, it almost it strengthens the
Speaker 2: idea of our third possible suspect. The arguments you're making
Speaker 2: about his personality, how he function and within the company,
Speaker 2: how he functioned on a work level, it does make
Speaker 2: it seem like maybe it was somebody who he had wronged.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's say someone killed him, not because of his
Speaker 1: talent for you know, bilking the work of others, but
Speaker 1: for some sort of personal vendetta. Right, Let's talk about
Speaker 1: those upset investors and or those rivals in the biohacking community.
Speaker 1: Former business partner guy named Rich Lee noted that Treywick
Speaker 1: had ripped off partners, ripped off researchers, and ripped off
Speaker 1: the public. He also Treywick, that is, allegedly owed money
Speaker 1: to fellow biohackers. Originally, Lee and all these partners thought
Speaker 1: that Treywick was very professional and he was supposed to
Speaker 1: issue them all shares or stock in a company, but
Speaker 1: Lee says he screwed them all over. Also Lee, it's
Speaker 1: a side note about Rich Lee. He originally one of
Speaker 1: his breakthrough inventions was a piece of wet where a
Speaker 1: vibrating penile implant called the Lovetron nine thousand, and that's
Speaker 1: he was interacting with Treyewick in this regard. Uh wait wait,
Speaker 1: he was interacting well sorry, sorry, sorry, in a business
Speaker 1: sense regarding this invention. Treywick wanted to own seventy five
Speaker 1: percent of the profits made from sale of the device
Speaker 1: in exchange for providing funding, and Treywick only offered to
Speaker 1: pay him five grand to get it off the ground,
Speaker 1: and he said, mister Lee had to pre sell the
Speaker 1: implant before it was finished and tested. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: Lee understandably is thinking, I can't pre sell somebody an
Speaker 1: implant for their genitalia unless I'm convinced it's both going
Speaker 1: to happen and happen safely. Did you say the name
Speaker 1: of the thing, love Tron nine Thousandron?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 4: I love that, I love Tron, that.
Speaker 1: You loved Tron nine thousand of that right, So now
Speaker 1: we go back to Tristan Roberts's original joke about faking
Speaker 1: one's own death committing pseudo side lee, it turns out
Speaker 1: takes this idea seriously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a quote here it says big pharma
Speaker 2: and government conspiracy theories started springing up after his death,
Speaker 2: But my first instinct was that he'd faked his own
Speaker 2: death and fled the country. Given the controversy surrounding him,
Speaker 2: some people suspected it would have been a hit, that
Speaker 2: another biohacker could have done it, And it does look
Speaker 2: pretty suspicious from the outside. You'd point to a feud
Speaker 2: between biohackers.
Speaker 4: What few we really seen like a real, you know,
Speaker 4: tooth and nail fight between him and any other specific biohackers.
Speaker 1: Are these people that gangster? It's a good question, that's
Speaker 1: That's the thing. It seems more like people resented him
Speaker 1: and seems that he many people do feel like he
Speaker 1: stole their money essentially, or swindled them, or stole their.
Speaker 4: Work, or even stole their kind of cred in a
Speaker 4: way by like being so vocal and like outspoken on
Speaker 4: the Internet and kind of hogging the limelight in a way.
Speaker 4: Whereas I almost want to it feels to me like
Speaker 4: some of these communities would prefer to be a little
Speaker 4: more underground.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Like how much of it is wringling brothers,
Speaker 1: You know how much of it is sound and fury? Right.
Speaker 1: And it's strange because after Treywick lost his shareholders or
Speaker 1: high skidaddled with their stuff, he started going really hard
Speaker 1: on his employees. He would announce these unrealistic deadlines to
Speaker 1: the media, to the public, and then he would pressure
Speaker 1: his researchers again, the people doing the work to cut
Speaker 1: corners on science to meet these crazy deadlines. It sounds
Speaker 1: a little bit like he was impulsively talking for a
Speaker 1: reaction in the moment and promising things that couldn't happen.
Speaker 1: This is also very common in politicians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or a purposeful way to put pressure on his employees,
Speaker 2: just like put it out there while I said it,
Speaker 2: so now we gotta do it.
Speaker 1: This also, this deadline rush and this kind of unsustainable
Speaker 1: growth that he was pushing for, makes Lee believe a
Speaker 1: suicide is plausible. He says that Aaron was suing a
Speaker 1: few friends and media outlets for defamation, but two weeks
Speaker 1: before his death on the twenty ninth, he dropped all
Speaker 1: of the lawsuits. Then he had a deadline coming up
Speaker 1: in a couple of days, one that there was no
Speaker 1: way in hell he was going to make. So does
Speaker 1: this mean that maybe he hit a wall of burnout
Speaker 1: and desperation and decided to quietly take his own life.
Speaker 1: If so, that's tough to say because how many people
Speaker 1: choose that method of self extermination.
Speaker 2: Well, there's, okay, a couple of things really fast. I
Speaker 2: gotta point to the fact that ketamine can take you
Speaker 2: to that state of euphoria where perhaps if you knew
Speaker 2: you were going to die or kill yourself, you would
Speaker 2: not experience the pain and terror and horror of passing over.
Speaker 1: Like LSD with Elvis Huxley.
Speaker 2: But it's it's like, yeah, kind of like that where
Speaker 2: it's been used before. I believe ketamine itself has been used.
Speaker 2: I know several drugs have been in assisted suicide to
Speaker 2: let people die without experiencing the existential.
Speaker 4: But he didn't overdose. He didn't There's nothing in his
Speaker 4: system that indicated that he took a drug to kill himself.
Speaker 2: He drowned, but perhaps not to overdose, but to die
Speaker 2: while on it. I'm just putting it.
Speaker 4: That's interesting. I'm just kind of being Devil's avogat here.
Speaker 4: It's interesting concept. I would lean much more towards an
Speaker 4: accidental drowning that's while intoxicated.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's where the story seems to lead us.
Speaker 1: You know, right now people still believe that there was
Speaker 1: something greater at play. Again, the primary thing is that
Speaker 1: if if a large private or governmental organization was going
Speaker 1: to remove someone from the picture for this kind of
Speaker 1: genetic manipulation, it's far more likely that they would remove
Speaker 1: the people actually doing the manipulation, actually doing the research.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't They wouldn't need to get rid of someone
Speaker 1: who was more of a networker and publicity person. They
Speaker 1: would need to get rid of the scientists. And that's
Speaker 1: where we're at with this story. We would love to
Speaker 1: hear if you're listening and you're part of the biohacking community,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear your take.
Speaker 2: And I would completely agree with you, Ben, if it
Speaker 2: wasn't for that a jar door.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there we go see, because.
Speaker 2: If he was in that sensory deprivation tank and he
Speaker 2: drowned in that sensory deprivation tank before it was drained,
Speaker 2: who opened that door?
Speaker 1: Is it possible that an employee opened it, found him
Speaker 1: dead and said like, I'm not I'm just gonna go.
Speaker 4: Maybe he was just raised in a barn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe just sting clothes. But no because the person
Speaker 1: who puts him in the tank would have to leave
Speaker 1: the room. Yeah, exactly, So maybe they were raised in
Speaker 1: a barnet.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: That possible. Some part of the story was raised in
Speaker 4: a barn.
Speaker 1: It's possible that there's a big barn element that we
Speaker 1: have not considered yet.
Speaker 4: A man is dead, you guys, I know, I know
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 1: It is true. The loss of human life is always
Speaker 1: a tragedy, regardless of how how people may or may
Speaker 1: not feel about Aaron Treywick. If you think that he
Speaker 1: was fighting the good fight and pushing technology forward, you
Speaker 1: can agree it's a loss. If you thought, you know,
Speaker 1: they was more of a swindler and a credit thief,
Speaker 1: then it's still a tragic thing. It's a tragic event
Speaker 1: when someone dies. It is important to note if we're
Speaker 1: talking about the actual medicine. This is another argument maybe
Speaker 1: against the FDA idea. Neither the herpes nor the HIV
Speaker 1: treatment actually worked. In fact, the guy who was self
Speaker 1: injected to the HIV treatment. His viral load.
Speaker 4: Increased, I believe after the injection, and he went back
Speaker 4: on his traditional HIV cocktail right.
Speaker 1: However, people in the community generally agree that love or hate,
Speaker 1: like or dislike Aaron Treewick brought much more attention to
Speaker 1: the transhumanist cause, even and his opponents are still seeing
Speaker 1: bad things about the guy, even if it was just
Speaker 1: a cautionary tale about how to not go about doing things.
Speaker 1: They had two small addendums that might be of interest.
Speaker 1: So right before his death, Aaron Trewick was planning a
Speaker 1: crisper trial in Mexico at a place called the International
Speaker 1: Biocare Hospital and Wellness Center, and the MIT Technology Review
Speaker 1: followed up on this lead. They did a great job
Speaker 1: and they found that yes there was a trial. It's
Speaker 1: going to be for lung cancer. People had to pay.
Speaker 1: Participants had to pay twenty five dollars at first to
Speaker 1: have Aaron Trewick I guess evaluate them or interview them
Speaker 1: to see if they were a good fit for the trial.
Speaker 1: And the clinic confirms that they were in talks. They
Speaker 1: did get pretty far along in the process, but they're
Speaker 1: not going to go forward with the trial. Now that
Speaker 1: Treywick has passed away, So is somebody attempting to stop
Speaker 1: that trial specifically?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it seems like, again to our earlier points,
Speaker 2: the company could have continued along with that trial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true, that is true. But you know, maybe
Speaker 1: he's the lynchpin. It sounds like he was organizing a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. Here's the last addendum though, you guys
Speaker 1: remember recently, I think we had talked about this a
Speaker 1: little bit off here, maybe on our Facebook page. Here's
Speaker 1: where it gets crazy, shameless plug the story of the
Speaker 1: Chinese scientists who claimed to have made the world's first
Speaker 1: genetically modified children.
Speaker 4: Yeah, also an ethical quandary, right, because he sort of
Speaker 4: followed it actually a similar path as this story that
Speaker 4: we're telling today, where he kind of did a lot
Speaker 4: of this stuff outside of oversight and then present did
Speaker 4: the findings. And I believe a YouTube video of some
Speaker 4: kind or some kind of internet stream.
Speaker 1: He made an appearance at the second International Someone on
Speaker 1: Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong.
Speaker 4: He did do something though, where he revealed some part
Speaker 4: of his research online.
Speaker 1: I think it went viral or somethingbody they recorded him saying, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And I think the people in the room, though the
Speaker 4: perspective was largely like pearl clutching and gasping is like, yeah,
Speaker 4: what the hell like you can't do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially when you're in a room full of scientists
Speaker 1: who are saying, look, we're trying not to scare people.
Speaker 1: Bro the here's the thing about that scientist. The story
Speaker 1: just broke on December third today as we were he
Speaker 1: is missing amid rumors of an arrest. Okay, no one
Speaker 1: knows where he is, and they say he was placed
Speaker 1: under house arrest in Shinjun after the conference, but his
Speaker 1: former workplace says the detention claims are inaccurate. We don't
Speaker 1: know where he is.
Speaker 2: Well, is this another episode?
Speaker 1: It very well? Maybe, but it's yeah, it's probably a
Speaker 1: story for a different day. You know. Maybe maybe a
Speaker 1: science was bad, maybe he got carried away, but I
Speaker 1: don't think that's a reason for him to get disappeared.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe there's something else going on. Might have to
Speaker 2: look into it, all right, So what do you think
Speaker 2: you got to write to us? You gotta tell us.
Speaker 2: Go on, here's where it gets crazy. Let's have a
Speaker 2: discussion about this one. This feels like a good one.
Speaker 4: Facebook.
Speaker 2: It is on Facebook. Ben already plugged it really hard.
Speaker 1: It's a quick Plug's a smooth, smooth slide into a
Speaker 1: segue plug.
Speaker 2: So so find us on Facebook or on Twitter where
Speaker 2: we're conspiracy stuff on Instagram where a conspiracy stuff show.
Speaker 2: If you don't want to do those things, you can
Speaker 2: give us a call one eight three three SDD tell
Speaker 2: you why DK. That's right, leave a message you might
Speaker 2: get on the air. We're gonna have another one of
Speaker 2: those pretty soon. We got to do that. And what
Speaker 2: else here? We just we just want to have a
Speaker 2: discussion about this one. Really, there's a lot of crazy
Speaker 2: stuff going on in this in this story, and we
Speaker 2: want to see maybe you if you've uncumbered something in
Speaker 2: this realm, in this world where Aaron Treywick existed, that
Speaker 2: is so murky.
Speaker 1: And what do you think about biohacking in general? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. So this is an interesting, tangentially related
Speaker 1: thing and we'll get out of here before Michigan Control
Speaker 1: kills us. Should it be illegal for people to use
Speaker 1: performance enhancing drugs or technology in the world of sports?
Speaker 1: I asked this because in the old days of baseball,
Speaker 1: using a baseball glove was considered unsportsmanlike and cheating.
Speaker 4: Really, yeah, I didn't know that. You're just supposed to
Speaker 4: bare knuckle it, Yes, bare knuckle it.
Speaker 2: Do you guys remember in the two thousands when it
Speaker 2: was illegal to take steroids. It was a crazy time.
Speaker 1: It's funny.
Speaker 4: That's funny, Matt. I like what you did there. Hey,
Speaker 4: if you don't want.
Speaker 2: To and that's the end of this classic episode. If
Speaker 2: you have any thought or questions about this episode, you
Speaker 2: can get into contact with us in a number of
Speaker 2: different ways. One of the best is to give us
Speaker 2: a call. Our number is one eight three three st DWYTK.
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