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An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people
- kyriakos 9y agoThought Silicon Valley TV show was a comedy.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cavanasm 9y agoWithout knowing how reputable any of this is, I'm somehow not shocked to hear Peter Thiel is interested in medically unnecessary blood transfusions. This could be totally fake, but just based on what I know about him from news, this seems like a perfectly plausible and normal for Peter Thiel interest.
- ithinkinstereo 9y agoHere's a prior article about this startup and Peter Thiel: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to-inject-himself-with-young-peoples-blood http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to-...
- sp332 9y agoThey buy the blood from blood banks, so people donating blood don't know it's going to paranoid rich people instead of sick people, and they don't get any of the money! Edit: I thought it was illegal in the USA to pay for body parts, but there is an exception for plasma (and maybe the rest of the blood?). But it's already predatory http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/business/06plasma.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/business/06plasma.html and this new business only makes it look worse.
- zzzzzzzza 9y agomaybe the blood banks need money to run their operations more than they need blood...
- tyingq 9y ago"His start-up, Ambrosia, is charging about $8,000 a pop for blood transfusions" And a quick google search says that people donating to a blood bank get $20 to $60 a pint, and the blood banks sell for $200-$600 a pint. I wonder if blood banks will figure out the model here and sell direct.
- maxerickson 9y agoBlood banks in the US tend not to pay for whole blood. Plasma donations are often paid though.
- tyingq 9y ago
- simplicio 9y agoPutting aside the ookiness factor, the science here seems pretty tenuous. "Self-reported improvements that scientists have been unable to replicate in clinical trials" are what's behind every questionable medical practice from homepathy to crystal healing. Especially given the time and money involved in having to get regular transfusions, I'd think the practitioners would be better off using the time to spend an extra hour in the gym.
- mikeash 9y agoPlus the small but non-zero risk when receiving a transfusion. Disease screening isn't perfect and there are other risks too.
- blang 9y agoI wonder how much of the improvements are attributed to having more red blood cells in your body that normal, which would allow you to carry more oxygen. This is the theory behind blood doping in sports.
- BlackLotus89 9y ago> "Self-reported improvements that scientists have been unable to replicate in clinical trials" I'm not sure where this quote comes from or even if it's a quote, but over the last couple of years I often read about studies proving just what this controversial startup claims. Reversing aging in mice and better healing through younger blood. The ability to use pre existing stem cells through transfusions of "younger blood" and such. I'm not sure what to think of it especially since it was only tested on mice and I didn't check the credentials of the researchers, but a quick search turned up multiple hits: https//arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/component-of-human-umbilical-cord-blood-perks-up-the-minds-of-old-mice/ https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130325093659.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130325093659.h... I remember another article that I couldn't find right now, but claiming a non reproducibility seems wrong. Again wouldn't go to this startup and think that many things are wrong here, but plausible at least.
- gcb0 9y agoi.e. medical researchers know how to add control groups for placebo effect, amateurs do not.
- taf2 9y agovampires
- hellbanner 9y agoBlood vampires & financial vampires combined! Horrible..
- korzun 9y agoStart-ups in the health care field have difficulty managing their HIPAA / HITECH compliance. You would have to be a special kind of idiot to allow them anywhere near your blood.
- bighi 9y agoThe title should be "a scam startup is stealing money from fool people".
- andrewclunn 9y agoAnd blood from injured people.
- AdmiralAsshat 9y agoWho knew that Countess Bathory was a visionary entrepreneur?
- logfromblammo 9y agoVaaS. Vampirism as a service. Brilliant! This is another one of those things that makes me fear that open class warfare is imminent, with torches, pitchforks, guillotines, and all the accessories.
- emersonrsantos 9y agoThis remembers the death of Gianbattista Cibo in 1492, or Pope Inmocent VIII, and an attempt from a foreign doctor to revive him on his deathbed by blood transfusions from three young male children (who died as well in the process).
- mapster 9y agoInteresting piece on the wiki page: there appears to be confusion re: drinking blood vs transfusion.
- yincrash 9y ago“I don’t want to say the word panacea, but here’s something about teenagers, whatever is in young blood is causing changes that appear to make the aging process reverse.” Sounds like the most stereotypical trope of snake oil.
- _jal 9y agoI love that, true to form for the U.S.'s peculiar flavor of capitalism, the producers can't legally sell their product, but those who receive the donations can, leading to a company whose value-add is apparently advertising and customer service creating yet another creepy service for rich paranoids. Think I'll be checking with the place I occasionally donate to and see where theirs ends up. If they need money, they can ask for that; reselling what I thought was going to hospitals, etc. to these literal vampires is not, ah, kosher with me.
- acd10j 9y agoThis will discourage voluntery doners from blood donation. It's really shame that there is no regulations to prevent this behavior.
- kolbe 9y agoI hope it does. If we need to ruin the system to rebuild it then so be it. But it is colossally fucked up that we ask/pressure teenagers to give blood without compensation. It's fucked up that we don't tell them, "we're going to sell this for $1000, and use that money to help pay our CEO $10,000,000 this year."
- novia 9y agoreselling what I thought was going to hospitals, etc. to these literal vampires is not, ah, kosher with me. Ok so... blood does have an expiration date, at which point the blood banks must throw it out. If the supply of donated blood is less than the demand of patients for the blood, then what's wrong with a company recouping their costs by selling almost expired blood to millionaires who don't need it? It didn't say anything in the article about how fresh the blood is, but if what I describe is what is going on, then I don't see the moral issue.
- _jal 9y agoThat is a possible scenario. There is still a moral issue, that of deception. If you're begging on the street for donations to fund a homeless shelter, those giving would likely be unpleasantly surprised to find the shelter uses the money to build luxury housing to additionally fund the shelter. Even if it is a solid strategy, you're still deceiving people to encourage them to donate. And if there are more rich paranoids than I think and there is real demand for this, what do you want to bet on the expiry date creeping back or similar shenanigans?
- keymone 9y agojust make it a market, regulate it to ensure there's no abuse and let people sell their blood if they want to. this could lead to improvements in people's health - to donate your blood it gets tested for diseases. edit: grammar
- sanxiyn 9y agoMore traditional clinical trial is being run by Stanford. Estimated completion was January 2017, but data is not posted yet. The official title is "The PLasma for Alzheimer SymptoM Amelioration (PLASMA) Study: Intravenously-Administered Plasma From Young Donors for Treatment of Mild-To-Moderate Alzheimer's Disease". More on https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02256306 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02256306
- nsnick 9y agoI always suspected Peter Thiel was a vampire.
- elorant 9y agoIn the meantime people who need transfusions because they have kidney failure they might have a hard time getting them.
- gcb0 9y agodo you want free blood? are you a communist European?! ...now grab the popcorn and see how the people against free healthcare is going to rationalize a defense for this.
- plussed_reader 9y agoThe old taking the vigor of the youth; what an apt metaphor.
- nerflad 9y agoIt's just like social security!
- kbenson 9y agoNow you too can have your own blood boy. Careful that your donor has good habits, or your cholesterol might go through the roof. At that rate, you might die by 120! For those of you confused, it's a reference to a recent episode of Silicon Valley, which actually covered this.
- GoodOldNe 9y agoTheir website looks like it was designed in FrontPage 2002: https://www.ambrosiaplasma.com https://www.ambrosiaplasma.com - The whole thing is super weird. As someone who has an interest in transfusion medicine, I would absolutely not do this.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago> ... helping Covfefe supporters? Dangit man!!! I snorted cola through my nose! You have any idea how much that stings?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dang 9y agoWe've asked you before to stop posting unsubstantive comments. If you keep doing it, we're going to end up banning your account. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14470829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14470829 and marked it off-topic.
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoIs there a way to have a private conversation with you?
- gadders 9y agoAnyone watch the Strain? http://the-strain.wikia.com/wiki/Eldritch_Palmer http://the-strain.wikia.com/wiki/Eldritch_Palmer
- gcb0 9y agothere is a bad 80s made for tv movie (or maybe a twilight zone ep) where a convenience store worker finds out the store is a front for stealing young's people blood so old rich people can live forever. in the end he run away and one of the old rich customer hold the pursuit saying "don't worry, he will be back eventually" ...and now it's lucrative pseudo science. sigh. maybe if they find the director he can be their very own hon Hubbard!
- bigtunacan 9y agoThere is already a shortage of plasma and blood for people with real medical conditions that need treatment. Consider in IVIG treatments that thousands of plasma donations are needed to make a SINGLE treatment dose and most people receiving these treatments have chronic diseases requiring ongoing treatment, so for just a single patient for one year you are talking about in excess of 10,000 donations needed. But hey; lets just sell it all to the Peter Thiels of the world so we can keep them alive forever...
- markkat 9y agoFrom what I understand, Ambrosia is transfusing plasma, not whole blood. There are a number of studies, going back many years, suggesting that young blood has a rejuvenating effect in older animals. I have been using bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to develop therapies for stroke and other forms of neural injury for more than a decade. What is particularly striking, is the effect of age upon these cells is quite obvious, both in vitro and therapeutically. In our own work, we found that when we treated stroked older animals with syngeneic MSCs from younger mice, they recovered much better than if they were treated with aged-matched MSCs. What is even more interesting IMO, is that a couple of groups have reported that transplantation of young-to-old bone marrow, or just young-to-old MSCs significantly extends lifespan in mice. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23967009 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23967009 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22355586 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22355586 Based on the value of preserving your own autologous bone marrow stem cells, and their potential to be used in self young-to-old rejuvenating transplantation, I co-founded https://foreverlabs.com https://foreverlabs.com. In short, we cryopreserve your own bone marrow stem cells, to be used later in life. It's much like cord blood stem cell storage, but for adults. The blood is born out of the bone marrow. Furthermore, the bone marrow cells (including MSCs) produce many soluble factors (proteins, cytokins, microvesicles, non-coding RNAs, etc.) that can significantly alter the blood profile. Thus, there is reason to believe that the parabiosis or the 'young blood effect' could be conferred by rejuvenating the bone marrow niche. Indeed, we this might be happening in the studies cited above. We just launched our own version of a young-to-old bone marrow stem cell transplantation study in mice. It is our goal to better understand and optimize the young-to-old bone marrow transplantation effect, and to eventually offer the ability for our clients to donate their own younger bone marrow to their older selves (in addition to providing a store of young cells for other potential therapies). There is much work to be done, but IMO there is real opportunity for a health-maintenance approach to medicine, and this is one of them. Disease treatment will not long remain as the most rational or economical approach to healthcare.
- digikata 9y agoIf we are on the verge of cultured meats of various types, is blood that far behind?
- nradov 9y agoI was concerned about this because I'm scheduled to donate blood later today so I contacted the American Red Cross on Facebook and asked if they had ever sold blood to Ambrosia. "The Red Cross has no record of providing blood to this organization." So Ambrosia must be getting their blood from another supplier.
- wideem 9y agoEvery millionaire wants their personal blood boy :)