Wealthy entrepreneur and extreme “biohacker” Bryan Johnson claimed Tuesday that he just cloned himself as a “newborn” for the purpose of providing him blood and cells.
“This baby-bryan lives in a petri dish for now,” Johnson said on X, explaining that the so-called “clone” will be used to provide malleable “pluripotent” cells that “can be differentiated into hundreds of cell types.”
The biohacker appears to use the word “clone” loosely to refer to the process of reprogramming some of his cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). In his post, he said the process involved drawing his blood; extracting his cells; applying “yamanaka factors,” which are four proteins that can reprogram mature adult cells into stem cell-like cells; resetting “epigenetic age”; and “restoring” the cells to “an embryonic-like state.”
He stated this “clone” can also be used to “grow organs for transplantation.” Johnson’s allegation that a self “clone” can be used for organ harvesting is reminiscent of the 2005 novel Never Let Me Go as well as the 2005 film The Island, both of which featured human clones bred for organ harvesting.
Johnson, who is known for the drastic lengths he goes to in the hopes of never dying, recently announced that he has developed autoimmune gastritis (AIG), a rare, “incurable” disease that he says is causing his stomach to “eat itself.”
He suggested on Tuesday that this “clone” was created in an attempt to heal himself from this stomach disease.
“I mentioned getting diagnosed with an incurable disease is one of the best things that has happened to me in a long time,” Johnson wrote. “It’s opened up a frontier of new paths to repair and strengthen the body. This is the first example.”
Johnson is the founder and former CEO of Kernel, which creates devices that monitor and measure brain activity, and was also founder of online payments company Braintree.
However, he is best known for his anti-aging efforts that involve a strict lifestyle regimen: He rises at 4:30 a.m., eats all of his meals before 11 a.m., and goes to bed at 8:30 p.m. every day, according to a September 2023 report from The Guardian. According to a Fortune report, “Every day he also takes two dozen medicines at 5 a.m., consumes 1,977 ‘vegan calories,’ and exercises for an hour before using blue-light-evasive glasses and hitting the hay.”
He has also had himself injected with “gene therapy,” regularly receives red-light therapy, and meticulously tracks a variety of biological metrics daily.
His stated philosophy is “Don’t die.”
In a quest to achieve immortality, Johnson has received blood from his teenage son and other young persons. In 2023, news emerged that Johnson had recruited his then-17-year-old son, Talmage, to provide a full liter of his blood that was separated into a batch of liquid plasma and then a batch of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets, according to a Bloomberg report.
His son’s plasma was then infused into his veins.
Since early last year, Netflix has streamed a 1.5-hour documentary about Johnson’s longevity quest titled Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever.
Johnson claims that through his “Project Blueprint” he has achieved metabolic health equal to the top 1.5% of 18-year-olds, inflammation 66% lower than the average 10-year-old, and reduced his speed of aging by the equivalent of 31 years.
Ah, I know how to cure him...."vegan" diet is why he is sick. All he needs to do it eat only meat for a few years.