Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, wasn't the Stuff to Blow your Mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and dot Joe McCormick, and hey,
Speaker 1: it's Halloween season. Today's episode is kind of HALLOWEENI we
Speaker 1: also want to remind you to feature to check out
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is, uh,
Speaker 1: the main site. That's where you find all of the podcast,
Speaker 1: all the videos of various blog posts. And we have
Speaker 1: a two interesting things going on this month. Monster Science,
Speaker 1: the video series that I've been doing in the past
Speaker 1: here is coming back these last two weeks of October
Speaker 1: four new episodes with the sort of vhs leyden Um
Speaker 1: horror cinema themed explorations of science. All right, so let's
Speaker 1: get rolling with this. I want to kick off by
Speaker 1: just asking you. It's just a very basic question here, Joe.
Speaker 1: Do you see yourself as you eventually enter old age?
Speaker 1: Do you see yourself drinking the blood of the young
Speaker 1: in order to sustaining your unnatural life? M Now, are
Speaker 1: we're talking about the blood of the young human or
Speaker 1: the blood of any young animal? I mean, I assume
Speaker 1: the young deman. I mean that's where the vitality is.
Speaker 1: That's what human life force is. If I'm going to
Speaker 1: keep my own human life force going, that's a good
Speaker 1: place to go, right it could be. But then again,
Speaker 1: if we follow our our magical intuitions and the history
Speaker 1: of our practices, I think animal blood rituals have been
Speaker 1: fairly common in human history, right, yeah, and certainly not
Speaker 1: only animal blood rights, but even into early pseudo scientific
Speaker 1: ideas of of taking elements from particularly virile seeming specimens
Speaker 1: and and using those tissues in our own body. You know,
Speaker 1: I think I would feel rude drinking the blood of
Speaker 1: young humans. But what I might do is a kind
Speaker 1: of mithraic ritual where I would get into some contraption
Speaker 1: and have a bull on a grate above me and
Speaker 1: then just bathe in its showering blood as it is butchered. Okay, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that was that way. It's not like the direct
Speaker 1: bathing or the direct consumption of the blood. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a buffer, a mythic buffer zone there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And then of course you get all of the all
Speaker 1: of the wonderful attributes to the bull, right, the strength,
Speaker 1: the power, the virility, it's good stuff. Yeah, Or potentially
Speaker 1: just like a bull Testies young person blood smoothie, that
Speaker 1: that might end up being my like vampiric morning ritual
Speaker 1: when I'm an old person. Now, Robert, obviously you brought
Speaker 1: this up for a reason. Are are you thinking about
Speaker 1: drinking blood anytime soon? Well? I can't help but think
Speaker 1: about it a little bit, just based on some of
Speaker 1: our the research we've been doing here, uh, some some
Speaker 1: mythic research and historical research, and most importantly some modern
Speaker 1: scientific research into the advantages of taking another individual's blood
Speaker 1: into your own body. That that sounds like you're hedging there,
Speaker 1: you know, so, so not necessarily always just drinking blood,
Speaker 1: but but at least some way taking blood, taking someone's blood, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, because certainly there are various ways of of
Speaker 1: of taking another individual's blood and gaining some sort of
Speaker 1: life essence from it. Right, Probably the most notable mythological,
Speaker 1: folkloric example of this, if not actual historical fact, is
Speaker 1: that of Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathing Right, the blood Countess. Right,
Speaker 1: So she was one according to the historical record, I mean,
Speaker 1: we can never really know. She was apparently one of
Speaker 1: the most prolific serial killers in human history. Yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're talking to like six fifty victims during her reign,
Speaker 1: and the charges level against we're pretty out there, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's one of the problems looking back
Speaker 1: at it. To what extent are these uh, these charges
Speaker 1: in Bellish, To what extent are they outright slander? Right? Right?
Speaker 1: But at least what she was charged with was the
Speaker 1: murder of hundreds of I think it was mostly young girls. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were charges that that young virsion girls were favorite victim. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the story goes that Countess Bathie feared aging, that
Speaker 1: she didn't want to become old and shriveled and and
Speaker 1: see her youth to evaporate before her eyes, and she
Speaker 1: got a pretty interesting idea in her head what if
Speaker 1: she could maintain her youth with the blood of the young. Again,
Speaker 1: we we don't know to what extending Any of this
Speaker 1: is history. A lot of it's probably just made up
Speaker 1: legend about her. It is pretty certain, I think, I
Speaker 1: think most historians think that she did really or was
Speaker 1: involved in the killing of lots of young girls. But
Speaker 1: you know, her motivations for it, and whether she actually
Speaker 1: bathed in their blood or consume their blood or anything
Speaker 1: like that that. I think that's a lot shakier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't really see many of any historians say yeah,
Speaker 1: I think she actually bathed in the blood of virgins.
Speaker 1: More likely they tend to run the gannet between she
Speaker 1: was just a victim of conspiracy, uh, but was also
Speaker 1: a part of a bread and murderous, an awful family
Speaker 1: who Yeah, she was a really awful ruler who probably
Speaker 1: got what was coming to her. So you can sort
Speaker 1: of pick and choose and decide where you're gonna fall
Speaker 1: in there. But the the idea, the myth of the
Speaker 1: thing that the folkloric idea of this evil, rich ruler
Speaker 1: uh bathing in a young person's blood in order to
Speaker 1: stay young, that continues to resonate, and and of course
Speaker 1: it also has various um racist and sexist qualities to
Speaker 1: it as well. And besides from this, you know sort
Speaker 1: of out the outskirts of Europe, Yeah, Eastern European. She's exotic,
Speaker 1: she's dangerous, uh, And of course all she wants to
Speaker 1: do is is a peer young. She's so vain and
Speaker 1: so hateful towards those who actually have beauty and youth
Speaker 1: that she would murder them and bathe in their blood.
Speaker 1: Now there's a tangent about Elizabeth Bathory that I cannot resist.
Speaker 1: It's not really related, but I remember back when I
Speaker 1: was in high school, coming across it was either a
Speaker 1: seat or a tape of a metal band called Bathory
Speaker 1: that I thought was the funniest CD cover I've ever
Speaker 1: seen because the bad calligraphy on the name Bathory made
Speaker 1: it look like it said bat Lord. Wouldn't that be
Speaker 1: a great metal band? That Lord sounds good too? And
Speaker 1: also you know, vampirick and also so I like it. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: when we get into mythology and folklore, of course, there
Speaker 1: are way too many examples of blood drinkers and vampireic creatures.
Speaker 1: They're far too many examples of blood rituals to even
Speaker 1: go into right there. Just it's a common trope throughout
Speaker 1: human history. Um, we even had and we have so
Speaker 1: many examples even of our own culture. One that came
Speaker 1: to mind when we were talking the other day was
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies TV show called The Immortal. I've never
Speaker 1: seen this. I only saw it because there was a
Speaker 1: brief time in the late nineties, I think maybe the
Speaker 1: early two thousands where they were showing reruns on the
Speaker 1: Sci Fi Channel, and it was one of these shows
Speaker 1: where it was like it was an ABC it was
Speaker 1: an ABC Movie of the Week and then a very
Speaker 1: brief television show that didn't take off, And it was
Speaker 1: kind of from The Incredible Hulk mold. So you have
Speaker 1: this going from town to town. Yeah, somebody's chasing him.
Speaker 1: There's something this overarching plot of these people who are
Speaker 1: after him. But then from in each town that he
Speaker 1: goes to, he has this ability to help people or
Speaker 1: their new sub villains to deal with. Also, like The
Speaker 1: Incredible Hulk, he's got a power that's both a blessing
Speaker 1: and a curse. Yes, So his his whole deal in
Speaker 1: this show is that his blood uh is essentially kind
Speaker 1: of magic, right, It's this wonderful, wonderful blood. In a
Speaker 1: transfusion of this blood will basically wipe out any of
Speaker 1: your illnesses and it can allow you to live longer.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's it's it's a longevity uh drug
Speaker 1: in this man's veins. It's like a biological anti virus program. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so of course there's a particular rich old dude
Speaker 1: who wants nothing more than to just keep him closed
Speaker 1: up in his mansion to himself, so he can just
Speaker 1: have as much of his blood as he needs to
Speaker 1: keep going and make him the mad Max blood bag
Speaker 1: on the front of his car. Yeah yeah, right there
Speaker 1: in the front of his limo. Uh so, but of
Speaker 1: course the hero doesn't doesn't dig that, so he escapes,
Speaker 1: he's on the run, and uh you know, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a very nineteen seventies kind of an incredible Hulk delivery,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of a cool idea and it definitely
Speaker 1: ties in with a lot of the actual science we're
Speaker 1: going to discuss later in the episode. Well, there there
Speaker 1: are multiple ways that I think people would imagine blood
Speaker 1: could have a power to rejuvenate, to invigorate, to give
Speaker 1: you the strength of the young, and I think they
Speaker 1: sort of occur along a scale of magical thinking. Like
Speaker 1: on one hand, there's a much more straightforward, I think
Speaker 1: material kind of approach to it, where you'd think, well,
Speaker 1: there's something about young people's blood that gives them their
Speaker 1: body strength, and so it must be nutritious in a way.
Speaker 1: You know, you can imagine people wanting to consume it
Speaker 1: with a with a fairly secular mindset, as long as
Speaker 1: they don't know much about modern medicine. Um. But then
Speaker 1: there's also the magical end where you start getting into
Speaker 1: magical associative thinking, where where properties of a thing can
Speaker 1: be absorbed by coming into contact with its essence. And
Speaker 1: then you get into some of these funeral cannibal rights
Speaker 1: where an individual will partake of the flesh of a
Speaker 1: loved one after they have died in order to absorb
Speaker 1: part of them. And then there's the whole realm of
Speaker 1: what James Frasier called homeopathic magic, where light cures likes
Speaker 1: and the thinking here would go that the blood of
Speaker 1: the young must cure the old and turned back the clock,
Speaker 1: because that's just that's what it is. That's the the
Speaker 1: inherent nature of how how different properties interact with each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So throughout the history of using homeopathic magical medicine, the
Speaker 1: idea might be that you take a thing associated with
Speaker 1: another thing to cure that second thing. So, you know,
Speaker 1: if you had problems with your hand, you might consume
Speaker 1: the paw of an animal or the hand of a
Speaker 1: person or something like that, you know, or a problem
Speaker 1: if you had headaches, you might consume ground up skull
Speaker 1: or something like that. So yeah, if your if your
Speaker 1: problem is aging, you can consume youth. And what is
Speaker 1: the essence of youth more than the juice of young people?
Speaker 1: Young people's blood. And another influence I can also think
Speaker 1: of that might have made people over the centuries want
Speaker 1: to imbibe the blood of the young in order to
Speaker 1: avoid aging or to restore vigor and vitality, is the
Speaker 1: sort of bodily humor thinking. You know that you had
Speaker 1: the four temperaments that went along with the bodily humors theory,
Speaker 1: and in that traditional order of temperaments, the sanguine temperament,
Speaker 1: the one that's associated with blood is the one that's
Speaker 1: like positive and excitable and high energy and playful. It's
Speaker 1: still there in our language, like to be sanguine about
Speaker 1: something is to be optimistic or positive about it. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if that association within the body Humor's
Speaker 1: theory is a symptom of this underlying association we have
Speaker 1: between blood and then youth and vigor and vitality, or
Speaker 1: if the association between blood and youth and vigor comes
Speaker 1: from the bodily humor's theory. Yeah, that's that's an interesting take.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about that. You know, another thing that
Speaker 1: comes to mind, at least for the modern era, is
Speaker 1: that since we we talked before about how we can't
Speaker 1: help but think of ourselves and think of reality in
Speaker 1: terms of whatever our technology is. So uh, you know,
Speaker 1: for a while, certainly in the industrial age, we've we've
Speaker 1: looked at the body as biomechanical, and here we're having
Speaker 1: to deal with all our automobiles, and what do you
Speaker 1: have to do with your automobile? You have to take
Speaker 1: out the old oil, right and get some new oil
Speaker 1: in there. So maybe on a subliminal level, even a
Speaker 1: subconscious level, rather we end up thinking of of ourselves
Speaker 1: as an automobile and like, well, maybe I'm just filled
Speaker 1: with all this old oil, and what if I could
Speaker 1: get that old oil out and get a you know,
Speaker 1: a a transfusion of new oil. Yeah, So I could
Speaker 1: see where we might buy into the concept, um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: at a subconscious level, just based on our technology. And
Speaker 1: it's also of course easy to to think of it
Speaker 1: just as pure metaphor, right, because we're we're surrounded by
Speaker 1: you know, largely youth obsessed culture. You see plenty of
Speaker 1: examples of of middle age and older individuals who is
Speaker 1: grasping after that youth right made sometimes quite literally in
Speaker 1: the form of rich old men with very young romantic partners. Now,
Speaker 1: I can't remember where I read this. I think it
Speaker 1: was in one of our sources, maybe let me know,
Speaker 1: But there was a suggestion that the idea of grasping
Speaker 1: back after youth might also be a fairly recent thing
Speaker 1: in the history of humanity, because it's only recently that
Speaker 1: humans have begun to regularly live to old age. In
Speaker 1: some parts of the world, I mean, more often there
Speaker 1: was high infant mortality, more people side in middle age
Speaker 1: or younger. Uh, And now it's pretty common that if
Speaker 1: you have access to good, high quality medical care, you
Speaker 1: can usually live to a decently long age. Well, that's
Speaker 1: that's an interesting take on it there too. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so maybe that is kind of something we should have
Speaker 1: looped in with the biomechanical body as a more modern
Speaker 1: view on on vampiod diets. Now, before we really get
Speaker 1: into the topic, though, we probably just have to talk
Speaker 1: about the consumption of blood as a food, like what
Speaker 1: does that mean? What does that entail? And it's a
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting, uh, to stop and study that, particularly
Speaker 1: when you look at animals that are obligate. Sango VORs
Speaker 1: that that feed exclusively on blood, like the vampire bat
Speaker 1: say that category again obligates, So that's great blood only.
Speaker 1: They go to the they go to the restaurant. They
Speaker 1: need to see the blood only menu. They're not gonna
Speaker 1: eat the salad. They're not gonna eat the steak. It's
Speaker 1: just the blood. That's the corner that they've they've painted
Speaker 1: themselves into evolutionarily, well, from a lay person's point of view,
Speaker 1: it would seem like blood would be a perfectly nutritious thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, the conventional wisdom is that the blood is
Speaker 1: the life, right, Yeah, I mean it's the life, it's
Speaker 1: the life blood. This is the stuff itself. This is
Speaker 1: like the pure essence. This is like humanity straight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you think that's kind of ore the magical mythic realm
Speaker 1: to it. But when you actually look at something like
Speaker 1: a vampire bat um and you look at its consumption
Speaker 1: of blood, I mean it's basically consuming protein and water.
Speaker 1: There's there's no fat for the bat to store away,
Speaker 1: So unlike their insect and fruit eating kin, they can't hibernate,
Speaker 1: they can't migrate because they lack the fat stores. Instead,
Speaker 1: they have to feed every night, lapping up to their
Speaker 1: body weight in order to survive, and um, it sounds
Speaker 1: like a very difficult limited diet. Yeah. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: there are a lot of fascinating theories about how it
Speaker 1: occurred that they may have started out feeding on parasite
Speaker 1: that contain the blood, and then eventually that they decided
Speaker 1: weren't decided. Eventually they evolve more in the direction of
Speaker 1: feeding exclusively and directly on the blood, as opposed to
Speaker 1: the creatures that feed on blood. Oh, interesting, how an
Speaker 1: intermediary could come in there? What was that story I
Speaker 1: was reading about a while back about there's a particular
Speaker 1: species of African jumping spider that likes human blood but
Speaker 1: not drinking it directly from humans, right, praise on mosquitoes
Speaker 1: that contain it. Yeah, so it's the same, the same
Speaker 1: sort of situation where yeah, eventually you just give up
Speaker 1: the middleman and just going straight for this might come
Speaker 1: straight to us. Yeah, And so that's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that it's hard to imagine a human feeding exclusively
Speaker 1: on blood to get into or even even a humanoid
Speaker 1: certainly a larger creature, just because the energy levels required.
Speaker 1: But we know fully well that humans do sometimes consume blood,
Speaker 1: don't they. I mean, I I have seen a blood sausage,
Speaker 1: but I don't think I've ever eaten one. I don't
Speaker 1: know that I have either, unless, I mean, after I
Speaker 1: would reading about it, I thought, well, maybe I've had
Speaker 1: it on an airplane. It didn't realize it because I've
Speaker 1: like I've flown some some some particularly some Asian airlines
Speaker 1: before where there's like some sort of a sausage meat
Speaker 1: that I couldn't identify looking at pictures. Maybe that was
Speaker 1: blood sausage. I don't know, but you see some version
Speaker 1: of blood sausage in a lot of different cultures, and uh,
Speaker 1: including I was. I found this interesting. The red tofu
Speaker 1: found in some parts of China, the blood tofu blood tofuu. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's made from like pigs blood or something. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's not not really tofu. So any any vegetarians out
Speaker 1: there see that on the menu, you might, and you know,
Speaker 1: ask a few questions about it before you order it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then of course there are various blood festivals. There's
Speaker 1: a Nepalese Yak blood festival in which they drink blood.
Speaker 1: They are various traditions throughout the world. Where blood is
Speaker 1: consumed directly as sort of a culinary ritual. And certainly
Speaker 1: in the American tradition, what everyone the whole thing is
Speaker 1: to have a big rare steak, right, And certainly that
Speaker 1: is blood leaking out of that meat. You know, I've
Speaker 1: heard that all my life, but I think I've actually
Speaker 1: read recently that that is not true. That the that
Speaker 1: a the like the meat you would buy package the
Speaker 1: grocery store, is mostly drained of blood. There's really not
Speaker 1: going to be much blood in it. Uh. And that
Speaker 1: when you cut into a bloody steak, you know, like
Speaker 1: a nice rare steak, and all that red liquid comes out,
Speaker 1: that's mostly just a mixture of water and then some
Speaker 1: other protein. I think it might have been myoglobin. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I'm thrown off here by vampire movies
Speaker 1: in which like a newly turned vampire starts sucking steaks
Speaker 1: to stay alive. I feel like that trope has shown up,
Speaker 1: I think inhabit and perhaps in Chronos as well. I
Speaker 1: can't remember Chronos. That's a great one. So yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe this is an example of my my knowledge is
Speaker 1: that has based more fiction than reality. But but either way,
Speaker 1: humans have not been averse to consuming blood throughout history
Speaker 1: as part of their diet, but not exclusively. Well, now
Speaker 1: that leads us to just again the idea of medicinal
Speaker 1: consumption of blood. Occasional consumption of blood is part of
Speaker 1: some actual treatment of malady or illness, or just some
Speaker 1: sort of a ritualistic practice, and there are a number
Speaker 1: of cool examples of this. Drawing up most of these
Speaker 1: examples from two different sources here, there's an excellent article
Speaker 1: by Maria Dolan from Smithsonian Magazine titled The Gruesome History
Speaker 1: of Eating corpses as Medicine, and of course that goes
Speaker 1: into a lot more than just blood consumption, but also
Speaker 1: flesh consumption. Is great article. I'll include a link to
Speaker 1: it on the landing page for this episode. And there's
Speaker 1: also another great article, Young Blood, by Jess Zimmerman writing
Speaker 1: for Ian Magazine. I really liked both of these articles too,
Speaker 1: that were great reads. But yeah, so some of the facts.
Speaker 1: According to a description by Plenty the Elder, who is
Speaker 1: a Roman historian, apparently Romans loved to drink the blood
Speaker 1: of gladiators who were killed in the arena in ancient Rome,
Speaker 1: so you'd have people down there. It out. I guess
Speaker 1: one of them gets skewered with one of those little
Speaker 1: pokey pokey Roman swords, the blood starts to come out,
Speaker 1: and people just be like, give me some don't count
Speaker 1: out the trident, dude. I always like to try it
Speaker 1: ent and that guy, to whatever extent, that was actually
Speaker 1: a thing and not just an artistic motif. But I
Speaker 1: always I was always rooting for him because he had
Speaker 1: more of the uphill battle. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would drink his blood because clearly he's he's he's smart, powerful,
Speaker 1: but smart. Yeah, so that's what I want before I
Speaker 1: go into podcasts. Again, I'm not sure exactly where this
Speaker 1: falls on that scale I talked about earlier, like the
Speaker 1: the sort of secular this is some kind of material
Speaker 1: nutrition thinking to the magical I'm gaining the power and
Speaker 1: essence of the gladiator thinking, I'd imagine this falls more
Speaker 1: to the magical side, right, Yeah, I would think so. Um,
Speaker 1: And it seems like it based on what I was reading.
Speaker 1: It may have its roots in Truscan funeral rights, so
Speaker 1: it may go beyond just you know, the near near
Speaker 1: bloodthirsty aspect of the culture at the time. And I've
Speaker 1: also read there's a two thousand three paper title between
Speaker 1: Horror and Hope Gladiator's blood as a cure for UH
Speaker 1: epileptics in Ancient Medicine, And this is published in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Historical Neuroscience. And this article posited that spontaneous
Speaker 1: recovery from some forms of epilepsy may be responsible for
Speaker 1: the illusion of therapeutic effectiveness UH from drinking the blood
Speaker 1: of a gladiator. So it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: it seemed to work enough of the time, so why
Speaker 1: not because it's also it's just it's just good fun.
Speaker 1: It's just part of the part of going out on
Speaker 1: the town and enjoying a gladiatorial contest. Well, yeah, the
Speaker 1: false cure working by this method, I think was a
Speaker 1: common feature of ancient medicine. You always read about these
Speaker 1: types of medicines that that ancient people's thought would be
Speaker 1: effective at curing X, Y or Z, when we now know,
Speaker 1: you know, this has no effect at all. Why do
Speaker 1: people think this? What might have happened really often is
Speaker 1: that somebody took some of this in an unrelated way.
Speaker 1: They just got better and it's like, look, it worked,
Speaker 1: or they might have received a placebo effect boost from
Speaker 1: from obtaining it. And then likewise, since uh, either they
Speaker 1: had to pay a certain amount to obtain this gladiator
Speaker 1: blood or it was such a big deal to get
Speaker 1: it that you end up tweaking your memories enough to where,
Speaker 1: of course it was a gladiator blood. I didn't drink
Speaker 1: the blood of a dead slave and not benefit from
Speaker 1: it and a monster, do you think, I am? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that that makes sense too, because we you know, we
Speaker 1: go through all kinds of mental justification to justify things
Speaker 1: that were difficult to get. So if you spend a
Speaker 1: lot of money on appliance or a piece of furniture,
Speaker 1: you end up coming up with ways of thinking this
Speaker 1: was a good investment. The same could be true some
Speaker 1: gladiator blood. I'm quite sure. So we we see this
Speaker 1: trend throughout history, and we're gonna roll through some of
Speaker 1: the examples, and some of these you're gonna get into
Speaker 1: a very alleged territory because it's a popular motif as well,
Speaker 1: to slander your enemy by saying they drink your people ahead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: quite common in fact. Like so, one example would be
Speaker 1: Pope Innocent the Eighth who died in fourtwo, and the
Speaker 1: story is that he was one of the first people
Speaker 1: to receive an attempted blood transfusion. But I think the
Speaker 1: stories seemed to be all over the place. It's like
Speaker 1: some say that he got blood from willing donors, or
Speaker 1: that he drank the blood of Jewish children, or yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of a reverse of the blood libel often leveled
Speaker 1: against Jews in medieval times, saying that they're they're they're
Speaker 1: drinking the blood of of of gentile children or processing
Speaker 1: it into some sort of abait good. Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: obviously that was not true with Pope Innocent the Eighth.
Speaker 1: I'd say grain AsSalt there, yeah, yeah, and not just
Speaker 1: as a flavor, the blood of the young boy. No, no,
Speaker 1: no drinking. But but obviously the idea there was that
Speaker 1: while you had an ailing, dying pope, maybe giving them
Speaker 1: the blood of someone younger could help stave off death, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course you have various um minds that are
Speaker 1: that are chiming in on this. Fifteenth century philosopher Marsilio
Speaker 1: Ficino suggested drinking blood from the arm of a young person,
Speaker 1: might I give you a health boost? So so you
Speaker 1: have that to to boost you or to encourage you
Speaker 1: to try it. So I assume I still living young person. Um, well,
Speaker 1: you know they're young people. So unless you're just you're
Speaker 1: lucky and they're not, you're probably gaining it from a
Speaker 1: young person. Also, you know they're young people. They don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of money. Maybe they want to make
Speaker 1: a few bucks on the side by draining a little
Speaker 1: blood off into a into a little uh little glass
Speaker 1: for a little goblet for elderly members of the society.
Speaker 1: I find the arm specification here kind of funny, like
Speaker 1: is that just an accident? End have said, well, the
Speaker 1: easiest place to get it is from the arm or
Speaker 1: did the arm matter? To him? Was like, now if
Speaker 1: you drink it from there, from their butt cheek, you're
Speaker 1: not going to get the same restorative power. Well, he
Speaker 1: must be referring to to obtaining it from a young,
Speaker 1: probably willing person here, and then they're not draining them
Speaker 1: whole because yeah, the arm is far enough away from
Speaker 1: your center of being. It's it's it's not close to anything.
Speaker 1: Uh that's too important, so yeah. Yeah. And then of course,
Speaker 1: up through the Renaissance, you you still had all these
Speaker 1: beliefs that consuming the flesh or the blood of humans
Speaker 1: in various ways could cure all kinds of diseases, right,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, sixteen and seventeenth century, you had many Europeans,
Speaker 1: including royalty priests, even scientists of the day that are
Speaker 1: that are trying remedies that are made from human bone,
Speaker 1: from fat, or from blood. Uh, in order to treat
Speaker 1: everything from headache to epilepsy. And despite some of the
Speaker 1: science we're gonna get into later in this episode, I
Speaker 1: think we can assume probably none of that actually worked. Um,
Speaker 1: let's see some other points here. At sixteenth century Italian
Speaker 1: alchemist recommended taking children under the age of thirteen, shutting
Speaker 1: them in a well enclosed room, sizening out the air
Speaker 1: which would be quote filled with the breath and expired
Speaker 1: substance of these five young virgins there for curative powers.
Speaker 1: But again this is an alchemist, so yeah again grain
Speaker 1: of salt. And of course through all these different rituals
Speaker 1: that come up, the blood needs to be fresh, you needs.
Speaker 1: It's not just a matter of finding a dead body
Speaker 1: and draining it like the body needs either needs to
Speaker 1: be still alive or very very very quickly exterminated. So
Speaker 1: there you can think of the gladiatorial arena. Of course,
Speaker 1: you've got somebody killed right there in front of you,
Speaker 1: so you know it's fresh. Or you could go to
Speaker 1: the other route, of the less valorous route, and stand
Speaker 1: around waiting for a prisoner to be executed. Ah. Yes,
Speaker 1: and here we see this, this tradition of the of
Speaker 1: the gladiators blood being carried on really into two fairly
Speaker 1: recent times. UM. I was reading one of the sources
Speaker 1: here of that article by Maria Dolan Smithsonian said that
Speaker 1: in nineteen o eight we saw the last known attempt
Speaker 1: made in Germany to swallow blood from a an executed
Speaker 1: criminal at the scaffold. Because for for a long time,
Speaker 1: apparently this was the thing. You would go to an
Speaker 1: execution and you drop a few coins for a cup
Speaker 1: of still warm blood from the executed Because the executioner
Speaker 1: he's kind of a magical boundary walker right between life
Speaker 1: and death, between accepted society and the outside. Often he's
Speaker 1: wearing a hood, right, and so this is where where
Speaker 1: you can go to him. He's a master of life
Speaker 1: and death, so he can give you some of the
Speaker 1: juice of life and death. Um. And again they're no
Speaker 1: more gladiatorial contest. This is your best bet at getting
Speaker 1: a young person's blood, because because that's the best kind.
Speaker 1: You gotta get the young virgin nor the young man's
Speaker 1: so the virile young blood, that's where the magic is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and along those lines, I think sometimes people recommended trying
Speaker 1: to get blood from people who were still alive. I
Speaker 1: guess like we were talking about was probably meant by
Speaker 1: the arm and the young person earlier. But people like
Speaker 1: paracelsis where we're suggesting that you should should drink fresh blood. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: sixteenth century Germans with physician general Renaissance man, you know,
Speaker 1: just hit his hands and everything, great Renaissance weirdo. And
Speaker 1: he believed yet the blood was probably good for drinking.
Speaker 1: And it was one of his followers that took this
Speaker 1: even further by suggesting that you take blood from a
Speaker 1: living body. And again there there there's a tradition here
Speaker 1: of of learned men at least contemplating the prospect. Leonardo
Speaker 1: da Vinci said, we preserve our life with the death
Speaker 1: of others in a dead thing in since a life remains,
Speaker 1: which when it is reunited with the stomachs of the living,
Speaker 1: regains sensitive and intellectual life. That's an interesting take on digestion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm the sources are there. You have some you have,
Speaker 1: you have learned men who are talking about the potential
Speaker 1: benefits of drinking blood. You have rituals and rights throughout history,
Speaker 1: so it continues to seem to make a certain amount
Speaker 1: of sense. Of course, if freshness isn't quite so necessary
Speaker 1: to you, you could probably just work it into some
Speaker 1: various recipes, right, you can make a marmalade out of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently there was a Franciscan apothecary recipe from sixteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine for a human blood based marmalade um. And as
Speaker 1: this as wen we end up eventually sort of transferring
Speaker 1: out of this. As as as medical science advances, suddenly
Speaker 1: the the idea becomes more about tissue. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: keeping the basic idea of absorbing the essence of some
Speaker 1: other more vital person's body intact, but we're just switching
Speaker 1: from blood to well, maybe we need to implant some testicles. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you see this. In the eighteen nineties and paris Um,
Speaker 1: Charles Edward Brown Sequad was with a champion of testes
Speaker 1: implantation um, Sergei Voronoff, would physically remove healthy testicles from
Speaker 1: young animals and implant the glands into patients. So you know,
Speaker 1: the thing is like that they're they're off base here,
Speaker 1: but it's it's forecasting like real science to come and
Speaker 1: real usable principles of of tissue and oregan transplants sometimes
Speaker 1: between species. And of course blood transfusions are an essential
Speaker 1: part of modern medical science. And it's not so much
Speaker 1: that you absorb the blood of the young to gain
Speaker 1: the power of the gladiator. But if you are ailing,
Speaker 1: if if you have a blood deficiency you need blood
Speaker 1: for some reason, of course you can get a blood
Speaker 1: donation from someone. Yeah, I mean to fall back on
Speaker 1: the biomechanical automobile example, it's like it's not so much
Speaker 1: that you know, say what you will about old oil
Speaker 1: and new oil. The machine needs oil to run, and
Speaker 1: if the oil leaking out, you've got to add some more. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's the difference between you wouldn't try to steal the
Speaker 1: oil from a sports car to gain the vitality of
Speaker 1: the sports car. You just need oil from somewhere. It
Speaker 1: can come from wherever, and so in this we end
Speaker 1: up working back up to our modern age, to our
Speaker 1: very modern age, as in studies that have come out
Speaker 1: this year the last few years where we again see
Speaker 1: this motif re emerge that you could take young blood,
Speaker 1: specifically young blood into your older body and benefit from
Speaker 1: it both physically and mentally. So we've talked about the mythology,
Speaker 1: the magical thinking of absorbing the powerful essence of a strong, young, vigorous,
Speaker 1: vital person by claiming their blood and making it your own.
Speaker 1: But there is some actual science that runs bizarrely close
Speaker 1: to this magical tradition. And this science has been in
Speaker 1: development for a long time. I think it's it's been
Speaker 1: sort of brewing for more than a century based on
Speaker 1: some old techniques, but it's only in the past decade
Speaker 1: or maybe a little more than the people have really
Speaker 1: started to catch on to exactly how potent this type
Speaker 1: of therapy could be. Yeah, really to the point now
Speaker 1: where it's it's very promising. Yeah. Uh, And we don't
Speaker 1: know yet what all of the implications are going to be.
Speaker 1: But let's get into the details of why you would
Speaker 1: take the blood of the young and give it to
Speaker 1: the old in a medical context. Yeah. And one of
Speaker 1: the a couple of big studies here that that that
Speaker 1: we're drawing from. One of them was the two thousand,
Speaker 1: fourteen Stanford University Medical Center study. UH. And and these
Speaker 1: these efforts, of course involved prior studies and continuing studies.
Speaker 1: This is very much a it's a network of findings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not just like a one off by any means. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it had already been before this one particular study,
Speaker 1: had already been established that, uh, there was some indication
Speaker 1: that some reins of the brains of old mice, when
Speaker 1: given the blood of young mice, would produce more nerve cells.
Speaker 1: And so obviously that's a good thing. But unfortunately the
Speaker 1: reverse also held true. So when you gave young mice
Speaker 1: exposure to the blood of old mice, they suffered for
Speaker 1: it that they had decreased health outcomes, we might say. Right. So,
Speaker 1: this time the researchers checked both for changes within nerve
Speaker 1: circuits and individual nerve cells, uh, in order to to
Speaker 1: demonstrate improvements in learning and memory. So first they examined
Speaker 1: the pairs of mice whose circulatory systems had been surgically conjoined.
Speaker 1: And this is the process we've been we've been doing
Speaker 1: for a while, UM, a process known as parabiosis. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We actually talked about this process on an episode of
Speaker 1: Forward thinking that I recorded with my co hosts on
Speaker 1: that show last year. But parabiosis is a very interesting, creepy,
Speaker 1: weird procedure that that really gives a lot of people
Speaker 1: the willies, but it has led to some very interesting
Speaker 1: and promising medical outcomes, so I think it's really worth
Speaker 1: talking about. So in this case, parabiosys, it comes from
Speaker 1: the words meaning sort of beside life, so side to
Speaker 1: side life essentially, and it refers to taking a patch
Speaker 1: of skin off of two mice and then sowing the
Speaker 1: mice together. Okay, so basically like hooking up the plumbing,
Speaker 1: the circulatory plumbing. Yeah, so you're creating a common circulatory
Speaker 1: system and causing the two mice to share a blood
Speaker 1: stream and the blood becomes one common pool. They're parabiotic.
Speaker 1: And the process collaboration, Yeah, exactly, they were working together,
Speaker 1: they're they're getting closer. So this was a process that
Speaker 1: was described by a French physiologist named Paul Barrett. It
Speaker 1: spelled like bert I believe in French, that'd be Barrett.
Speaker 1: I apologize if I'm wrong about that. In the sixties,
Speaker 1: I think it, and then later in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: the process was improved upon by a pair of people
Speaker 1: named Bunster and Meer. But essentially it entails taking two
Speaker 1: mice side by side and attaching them at parallel elbows
Speaker 1: and knees, and then sewing together an exposed patch of
Speaker 1: skin along the sides, and of course then the natural
Speaker 1: mammalian healing process kicks in the sides attached together, they
Speaker 1: fuse the skin joins and the capillaries connect, and then
Speaker 1: the mice can share this blood system and then apparently
Speaker 1: after some length of time, the pair can be separated
Speaker 1: again if necessary for the experiment. So that's the parabiasis.
Speaker 1: But what is hetero chronic parabiasis, because that's what they
Speaker 1: were really practicing here. Hetero chronic would mean mixed time right,
Speaker 1: mixed time scales. So when you're creating parabiotic mice that
Speaker 1: are hetero chronic, that means one old mouse and one
Speaker 1: young mouse. And this is where the fund comes in,
Speaker 1: because apparently when you join one old mouse and one
Speaker 1: young mouse, you get startling results. In the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: there was a guy at Cornell named Clive mackay, and
Speaker 1: McKay performed experiments on parabiasis, essentially trying to learn what
Speaker 1: he could about how to prolong lifespan. Can can you
Speaker 1: take mammals and make them live longer by sharing blood
Speaker 1: in this way? And what they found was that the
Speaker 1: old mice who got paired up, who got sewn together
Speaker 1: with a young mouse, showed rejuvenated cartilage, meaning that the
Speaker 1: cartilage andist tissue in their body actually appeared younger. Uh.
Speaker 1: And more recently, this line of research was picked up
Speaker 1: on by a researcher named Thomas A. Rando who continue
Speaker 1: continued this and published a study in Nature in two
Speaker 1: thousand five. And this showed that if you took two
Speaker 1: of these mice and you sewed them together, one old
Speaker 1: mouse and one young mouse, and you left him that
Speaker 1: way for five weeks, eventually the older mice showed improved
Speaker 1: rates of muscle healing and liver cell regeneration. So that's
Speaker 1: very interesting and promising. I read a Nature News piece
Speaker 1: about this line of research that had a very funny
Speaker 1: part where it said quote after the team published its results,
Speaker 1: Rando's phone started ringing incessantly. Some of the calls were
Speaker 1: from men's health magazines looking for ways to build muscle.
Speaker 1: Others were from people fascinated by the idea of forestalling death.
Speaker 1: They wanted to know whether young blood extended lifespan. So
Speaker 1: already the vultures who don't want to die and don't
Speaker 1: want to grow old are starting to pounce, said, I
Speaker 1: find a young person without any limbs and just kind
Speaker 1: of sew them out of my back like a living,
Speaker 1: rejuvenating back back. You'd become master Blaster from from Thunderdome,
Speaker 1: except it it would be you. I guess you'd be Blaster,
Speaker 1: and then you'd have a master on your back who
Speaker 1: is actually your blood slavey stitch on a millennial and
Speaker 1: and hit the clubs right. But anyway, that's all of
Speaker 1: the heterochronic parabiases, and that sort of brings us back
Speaker 1: up into the research of the more recent years, including
Speaker 1: this study. Yeah, and this study the hippocampus was really
Speaker 1: craz key. You. Now, this is a part of the
Speaker 1: brain brain that's critical for forming certain types of memories,
Speaker 1: notably used in recollection and recognition of spatial patterns. Experience
Speaker 1: physically alters it, and and various quote detrimental, anatomical and
Speaker 1: functional changes occur there as an individual ages. So as
Speaker 1: you get older, you're this part of your brain. I
Speaker 1: think the brain in general, but especially this part of
Speaker 1: your brain sees decline. Right. And it's also like one
Speaker 1: of the examples is often thrown out, and I think
Speaker 1: this has come up on the podcast before. You have
Speaker 1: London cabbies who have who actually have have larger hippocampuses
Speaker 1: due to the uh, you know, all the their knowledge,
Speaker 1: their physical knowledge of the city. They not yeah, the knowledge. Um,
Speaker 1: it's like or an order of warlocks, the kind of
Speaker 1: warlocks of their own kind. Um. But in old mice
Speaker 1: with new blood, they quote found consistent differences in a
Speaker 1: number of biochemical, anatomical, and electrophysiological measures known to be
Speaker 1: important to nerve cell circuits encoding of new experiences for
Speaker 1: retention in the cerebral cortex. So essentially what's happening here
Speaker 1: is the hippocamp i of older mice resemble that of
Speaker 1: younger mice. They made greater amounts of various substances that
Speaker 1: hippocampal cells are known to produce when learning is taking place,
Speaker 1: So we see not only a tissue boost here, but
Speaker 1: in actual mental boost like it's it's recharging the hippocampus,
Speaker 1: recharging the mind of the young mouse. They also found
Speaker 1: that hippocampal nerve cells from older members members of these uh,
Speaker 1: these old young parabiotic pairs words, also showed an enhanced
Speaker 1: ability to strengthen the connection between one nerve cell and another,
Speaker 1: which again is essential to learning and forming new memories,
Speaker 1: forging those internal pathways in the mind. And older mice
Speaker 1: and fused with young blood also did better on food
Speaker 1: hunting tests, such as one in particular where they would
Speaker 1: have a food platform that's submerged in a water filled container. Okay,
Speaker 1: so in this study they're not just looking at the
Speaker 1: anatomical information. They're not just saying, hey, you know, what
Speaker 1: is the number of cells we can find in this
Speaker 1: part of the brain, but they're actually testing behavior how
Speaker 1: it works in the field. Yea. Indeed, they also found
Speaker 1: they performed better and freeze tests. Now, this is where
Speaker 1: mice are trained to freeze and fear when plucked into
Speaker 1: a particular environment. And while old mile mice usually perform
Speaker 1: worse than the young, freezing for shorter periods of time,
Speaker 1: betraying a lack of recognition. So, in other words, you've
Speaker 1: been training to fear this environment, and if you the faster,
Speaker 1: you recognize it and freeze and fear the longer you're frozen.
Speaker 1: That shows that you're you're recalling it. But older mice
Speaker 1: get desensitized to this. They don't recognize their conditions as
Speaker 1: quickly correct. But when they have that that rejuvenating influx
Speaker 1: of young blood, they perform better on the freeze test. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this kind of thing makes you wonder what is
Speaker 1: it about the blood, because surely it's not it's not
Speaker 1: a magical essence. It's not the gladiator strength being carried
Speaker 1: through the magical properties of the blood. But it must
Speaker 1: be some kind of material that's in the blood that's
Speaker 1: doing this work of rejuvenation in the older mouse's brain.
Speaker 1: So it would be interesting to see if we could
Speaker 1: narrow down what it is in the blood that's causing
Speaker 1: this change. And one of the interesting things that you
Speaker 1: mentioned in a note about this is that apparently it
Speaker 1: didn't work if you heat it up the blood plasma, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what apparently happens when you heat up the blood
Speaker 1: is that it be natures or breaks apart key proteins.
Speaker 1: And so there could be some blood borne protein means
Speaker 1: that we've yet to identify and exploit that are are
Speaker 1: central to this, uh, this this taking place. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then of course another study has I think identified what
Speaker 1: they think are at least one of the key proteins.
Speaker 1: That's right. A series of recent Harvard studies and these
Speaker 1: are also using the stitch together old young mouse pairs
Speaker 1: and uh. This research headed by stem cell researcher Amy Wagers,
Speaker 1: isolated a specific protein from mouse blood growth differentiation factor
Speaker 1: at eleven or g DF eleven, and this seems to
Speaker 1: regulate stem cell activity and it's abundant in young mice,
Speaker 1: but it's level drops at the animals a right, So
Speaker 1: if you look at blood from a young mouse that's
Speaker 1: got plenty of g DF eleven, you look at blood
Speaker 1: from an old mouse, it has a lot less. So
Speaker 1: this would seem to be something that you could be
Speaker 1: re supplying to older mice by giving them the blood
Speaker 1: plasma of younger mice. Yeah, And indeed they found that
Speaker 1: injections of d d F eleven can reduce the thickening
Speaker 1: of the heart to take with quickly comes with aging
Speaker 1: in mice. They've also found that GDF eleven works nearly
Speaker 1: as well as parabiosis in helping aging mouth mice recover
Speaker 1: from muscle injuries, and it boost their performance on running
Speaker 1: and grip strength tests. Grip strength huh yeah, grip strength
Speaker 1: little mouse squeezies, I guess. Yeah, so you wouldn't just
Speaker 1: be like a mentally rejuvenated mouse in a in a
Speaker 1: weak decrepit body like it can actually give you some
Speaker 1: some juice back to So along with the Easter Island
Speaker 1: fungal agent reppams and also known as rapamune by fiser uh.
Speaker 1: Along with that and caloric restriction. Uh, this is one
Speaker 1: of only three intervention shown to reverse aging and multiple tissues.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty pretty big. Yeah, but we do also
Speaker 1: want to show caution here and say that it hasn't
Speaker 1: yet been successfully demonstrated in humans, and that most of
Speaker 1: the researchers who are trying to explain this to the public,
Speaker 1: they always want to emphasize that this isn't necessarily like
Speaker 1: a way to cheat death. It hasn't been shown to
Speaker 1: prolonged life unnaturally. I mean it might if if the
Speaker 1: data turns up, but it hasn't been shown to do
Speaker 1: that yet. Instead, it's talking about showing renewed capacity in
Speaker 1: certain tissues in older organisms. Yeah. So the more likely
Speaker 1: use of this technology, this, uh, this procedure would be
Speaker 1: for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, the treatment of heart disease,
Speaker 1: as opposed to some sort of futuristic slightly morbid longevity
Speaker 1: treatment for the rich and privileged. Uh And and some
Speaker 1: of the other caveats that are thrown out there is
Speaker 1: the old mice that are used in many of these
Speaker 1: experiments are essentially middle aged mice, and we're not sure
Speaker 1: what the effects would be if they would be less
Speaker 1: pronounced with truly old mice, or indeed with truly old humans.
Speaker 1: But the cool thing is that since uh since blood
Speaker 1: blood transfusions are routinely given to patients, trials like this
Speaker 1: would not be would not have to have um authorization
Speaker 1: from the US Food and Drug Administration. Uh So researchers
Speaker 1: can test this out in humans, sooner read it than later. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, if they're testing this on humans, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about parabiasis, not at all. They wouldn't be uh
Speaker 1: so well, I mean, who knows. I really don't think
Speaker 1: they would ever be thinking about sewing too humans together,
Speaker 1: sewing you together with your grandpa to see if it
Speaker 1: if it makes him healthier and you less healthy. And
Speaker 1: another way that this would not be used is drinking blood,
Speaker 1: because that's not what we're talking about. In fact, there
Speaker 1: was a funny way I mentioned this in the Forward
Speaker 1: Thinking podcast, but there was a New Scientist article interviewed
Speaker 1: a guy named Tony whis Corey who was one of
Speaker 1: the people working on this subject, and they got a
Speaker 1: quote from him where he's like, certainly you can't drink
Speaker 1: the blood, although obviously we haven't tried that experiment, so
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was trying to say maybe
Speaker 1: you could drink the blood that I don't think. So.
Speaker 1: I don't think drinking the blood will do it. It
Speaker 1: seems like it it's uh involving the direct transfusion of
Speaker 1: the plasma, specially that g DF eleven, the growth growth
Speaker 1: differentiation factor eleven, and then maybe some other elements in
Speaker 1: the blood or the plasma. Yeah, I mean it has
Speaker 1: to be circle tory to circulatory, not circular tory to
Speaker 1: gastroid testinal. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. That's like cooking
Speaker 1: your electricity up here to your planning system. But speaking
Speaker 1: of Tony whist Corey, there is apparently under this particular
Speaker 1: researcher and ongoing project that's studying the effect on human
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's patients, and I think this is very interesting. The
Speaker 1: last public update I found about this was a Nature
Speaker 1: News article from January, so earlier this year, saying that
Speaker 1: the experiment had started in September and it was a randomized,
Speaker 1: cebo controlled, double blind trial, UH testing the safety and
Speaker 1: efficacy of using young plasma to treat Alzheimer's disease. That
Speaker 1: that was what they said, And then that they said
Speaker 1: that six out of eighteen people who had originally been
Speaker 1: planned for the experiment, who were all older than fifty,
Speaker 1: had already started receiving the treatment, So they had already
Speaker 1: been getting plasma that came from people who were below
Speaker 1: the age of thirty. And so we haven't seen the
Speaker 1: results of this yet, but I think it's going to
Speaker 1: be really really interesting to see how this experiment turns out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, when you sort of cut away all of
Speaker 1: the mythic ghastliness that is built up with the idea
Speaker 1: of reusing human blood or consuming it, or or the
Speaker 1: old growing strong and the blood of the young, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of there are a lot of wonderful possibilities
Speaker 1: here for the treatment of conditions like Alzheimer's and heart disease. Yes, certainly.
Speaker 1: Though then again, on the other side, there have been
Speaker 1: other researchers who have been quick to warn that there
Speaker 1: would be limits to even this type of procedure. Like
Speaker 1: let's say that the results on the study come back
Speaker 1: and they say, WHOA, Giving older people younger people's blood
Speaker 1: has amazing effects even in humans, and it's been shown
Speaker 1: in this double blind, placebo controlled trial. Uh, so we've
Speaker 1: got a real, very important phenomenon on our hands. Even then,
Speaker 1: you might want to show some caution because there was
Speaker 1: a quote given to that Nature News piece I was
Speaker 1: talking about from from that that same researcher that I
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, Thomas A. Rando, and he said that
Speaker 1: this could result in too much cell division. He said,
Speaker 1: my suspicion is that chronic treatments with anything plasma drugs
Speaker 1: that rejuvenate cells in old animals is going to lead
Speaker 1: to an increase in cancer. Even if we learn how
Speaker 1: to make cells young, it's something we'll want to do judiciously.
Speaker 1: And that makes a lot of sense to me. So,
Speaker 1: if you've got a problem, which is that there's not
Speaker 1: enough cell division and cell growth in the body because
Speaker 1: you've gotten old, if you want to fix it by
Speaker 1: spurring lots of cell division and cell growth. That is
Speaker 1: what leads to cancer. It's it's the balance of life.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, But then again, I can easily imagine
Speaker 1: it's an area where, again this is just speculating, where
Speaker 1: an older individual has to make that choice. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I could certainly, I can certainly afford to hook this
Speaker 1: young person up to meet some of their blood and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a little sharper, my tissue is gonna improve,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna feel a little younger, but I'm also going
Speaker 1: to be more prone to cancer. You know, we're humans.
Speaker 1: We're really suck at weighing a short term versus long term, right,
Speaker 1: So I can I can see them saying, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna feel young this week, and I'll worry about
Speaker 1: cancer next week. I guess you could always go back
Speaker 1: and forth, right, you could get maybe say, in the future,
Speaker 1: we get really really good at treating cancer. So people
Speaker 1: are taking way too many stem cells or blood transfusions
Speaker 1: from the young get think this rejuvenated effect, but then
Speaker 1: also getting cancer. And then they're just using our strongest
Speaker 1: cancer fighting methods to fight off the cancer. And in
Speaker 1: time to get some more rejuvenating juice from the young.
Speaker 1: I think that these scenarios, as fun as they are
Speaker 1: to imagine, somehow I don't think it's quite gonna work
Speaker 1: out that way, because I I don't want this to
Speaker 1: be the case. But what I suspect is that we
Speaker 1: will see some result from this, but it will be
Speaker 1: kind of modest, you know. But again, you combine that
Speaker 1: with magical thinking, you combine that with the cebo effect,
Speaker 1: you combine that with kind of a desperate willingness to
Speaker 1: try something. I'm pretty confident you're gonna have some older,
Speaker 1: well off individuals. She is going to make this happen
Speaker 1: for himself or himself. Uh. One last thing I think
Speaker 1: we should say again before the end of this episode is, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: if you are reading anything about this, research that up
Speaker 1: to this point has said that lud or plasma from
Speaker 1: the young will make you live forever unnaturally extend your lifespan.
Speaker 1: So far that is not true. That has not been
Speaker 1: shown in any experiment that we could find evidence of,
Speaker 1: so for now that ain't the case. Unfortunately. All Right,
Speaker 1: So there you have it a little of the history,
Speaker 1: the science and mythology of old people drinking young people's blood,
Speaker 1: old people taking young blood into themselves, essentially the curative
Speaker 1: properties of young blood. My main takeaway from this is
Speaker 1: I want to drink whatever substance it is that will
Speaker 1: help me look like Gary Oldman does at the beginning
Speaker 1: of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. You mean the old bun
Speaker 1: hair or the bun hair the young flashback out of
Speaker 1: version with the with the cool armor. Oh well, well,
Speaker 1: either way it would be great. But I mean, see,
Speaker 1: if you're Gary Oldman's Dracula, you look great when you're
Speaker 1: young and vital, and you look great as an old
Speaker 1: decrepit bun hair. Either way, you're awesome. But also you're
Speaker 1: kind of saying as an old person, I want to
Speaker 1: look like I have that distinct look of a young
Speaker 1: actor that's been made up to look like an old man,
Speaker 1: sort of like the Prometheus version of what's his face? Right? Oh? Oh, no,
Speaker 1: guy Pierce. And that's the worst makeup job I've ever
Speaker 1: seen in film. No, Gary Oldman in Coppolis Dracula is
Speaker 1: much better. Are not your ways? Our ways are not
Speaker 1: your ways. This is a good place to leave off
Speaker 1: with this one. So hey, if you want to check
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