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Transcript:
It’s been a long time since I talked about Bryan Johnson, the bonkers grifter who is trying to live as long as possible. Back in 2023, I went over the basics of longevity research and talked about why it’s a fool’s errand to attempt to live forever, and specifically called out Johnson’s scammy “Blueprint” supplement company. Despite the fact that he’s peddling pills that cost more than a dollar each and are likely useless at best, I do think he believes what he’s saying because if he didn’t there’s no way he would look like that.
But Johnson is now back in the news for several reasons, none of them flattering but all of them wholly volunteered by himself on social media.
The first thing that happened was at the beginning of July, Johnson announced that despite the millions of dollars he spends on his health, he recently discovered he has a chronic illness: autoimmune gastritis.
Now, if you’ve never heard of autoimmune gastritis, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this is a devastating diagnosis had you only gone by Johnson’s posts or the immediate reply from his many critics. Johnson categorizes it as his stomach “eating itself.” He describes a painfully invasive process of getting the diagnosis, with a colonoscopy done at the same time as an upper endoscopy, followed by five biopsies of his stomach, and he ends his posts with a heartfelt plea that everyone take their health seriously because life is the most precious gift there is, and a vow that he will try his best to “beat” AIG.
In response, his critics responded by laughing about how this idiot gave himself a fatal disease and now instead of living forever he’s going to die painfully.
So, good news and/or bad news depending on your perspective: this is not a big deal, at all. Everyone, but especially Bryan Johnson, is being way, way too dramatic. Calm down.
Johnson points out that AIG affects only 2-5% of people, but probably more because it’s hard to diagnose. The main reason for that is that most people don’t even notice they have it. If you have AIG, your antibodies attack the acid-producing cells in your stomach, which makes it difficult to absorb iron. This usually leads to people having low iron, obviously, but not necessarily to the point of being anemic. It can lead to someone also having low B12. It also MAY be associated with an increased risk of eventually getting stomach cancer. So, if you have AIG, the treatment is to take B12 and iron supplements and have your doctor keep an eye out for stomach tumors. That’s it.
There ARE some annoying symptoms that go along with AIG, like frequent heartburn and bloating, and the treatment for that is eating a healthy diet. This is how people often get diagnosed: weird gastrointestinal issues along with low iron levels.
But that’s not even how Johnson was diagnosed. He didn’t do that insane ass-to-mouth endoscopy and those stomach biopsies because he was in pain and desperate for an answer–he did them because he’s a weird freak who couldn’t stand the idea that his iron was a little lower than average. He could have gone the rest of his life without knowing he had AIG and never experiencing a single negative symptom.
This is something I’ve talked about in the past: you might think that there’s no downside to, say, getting your entire body scanned for abnormalities, or having your genome sequenced to know what’s lurking in your DNA. But there is, because one of the worst things for your health is stress and not only is it stressful to be poked and prodded like that, but it’s even more stressful to learn you have some disease you now think you need to manage. There’s a reason that doctors stop screening elderly people for certain forms of cancer: once you’re 75, there’s no point in even knowing whether or not you have a slow-growing form of breast or colorectal cancer. Just go live your life.
So yeah, in my opinion not only is Johnson not going to die of AIG, but he’s announcing that he has put himself through a ton of stress just to get the diagnosis. That said, he’s going to milk that diagnosis for all its worth, which is why he got all “life is precious” in his announcement posts. That’s also why he blamed his diagnosis on the junk food he ate BEFORE he started trying to not die. That’s absolutely not true. He expresses that likely because he needs to believe it in order to keep doing his lifestyle, and because he wanted to stave off the obvious mockery that was to come.
It didn’t help, because I saw lots of his critics on social media claiming he gave himself AIG with all of his stupid diet shit. But the fact of the matter is that no one knows why he has AIG: experts suspect that it’s some combination of genetics, environment, and inflammation, but they simply don’t know.
Apparently, Johnson didn’t get enough of the attention he wanted with his AIG announcement, so last week he tried a new one, and boy is it a doozy:
“| just cloned myself.
…as a newborn
With this clone, I can:
+ become my own blood boy + test therapies on the clone + grow organs for transplantation + develop new treatments + inject young cells
This baby-bryan lives in a petri dish for now.
This may be scary to some people…a dystopian future.
But, for others, they will see it as the inevitable future of health.
Clinical trials are already using this technology to restore dopamine neurons for Parkinson’s, heart health and eyesight.”
Okay, so, credit where credit is due: “become my own blood boy” is an instant and obvious top post of all time. Say what you will about Bryan but that’s a straight up banger. There was no way this post wasn’t going to escape containment and end up on my social media feed.
But to quickly move on, no, this giant loser did not, in fact, clone himself. As a newborn, or anything else. He actually goes on to admit that “baby-bryan lives in a petri dish for now” so it’s pretty impressive he even tried that but he got a lot of people. When this landed in my feed, it was cut off before the petri dish part and it tricked a lot of people, who worried that Johnson actually somehow gained access to a human baby and was harvesting it for parts like Never Let Me Go 2: Never Let Me Go Harder.
There were also a lot of people confused about how he had managed to clone himself, when that is not a thing that humans can actually do. OR CAN THEY no, no they can’t. Like, the science isn’t there and also it’s illegal in most places to try it.
So, what the hell is he actually talking about? He actually went on to describe what it is: induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSC. He claims that these cells will allow him to rebuild his body
“> organ by organ
> repairing lost eyesight or hearing
> restoring kidney, liver or lung function
> repairing skin damage.”
None of that is true…yet. But it might be true in the future, and I wish this weird freak had just been honest about what they actually are because it’s legit fascinating.
You’re probably already aware of embryonic stem cells. These are cells harvested from donated embryos, and they’re special because stem cells can change to turn into a wide variety of other kinds of cells: as they split, they become a neuron, or a liver cell, or some other specialty. This makes stem cells very valuable for research and various kinds of therapies.
But the big drawback of embryonic stem cells is that they have someone else’s genetic code, not the patient getting them. So, in the mid 2000s, scientists set about the task of figuring out a way to take an adult’s cells and reprogram them to send them back to that earlier state before they specialized in something. They were able to do this using a specific set of genes, so now they can take a sample from a patient, reprogram them, and then have access to an unlimited supply of stem cells perfectly aligned with the patient’s DNA.
That’s awesome, and one day it will lead to therapies that, say, restore vision loss or reverse dementia. But today is not that day, unfortunately. As of this recording, there no iPSC therapies approved for use. But, there are a few in clinical trials. Just last week, Nature published the results of a moderately successful trial that used iPSCs in patients suffering from spinal cord injuries.
So sure, maybe if the Trump administration stops hampering and destroying scientific research, then before Bryan Thompson dies he could benefit from a therapy built on his own cells. I appreciate the fact that Thompson has given me an excuse to talk about the reality of iPSCs, and I also appreciate the fact that he gave us “become my own blood boy.” But fuck him for spreading stupid misinformation about clones and shit. I hope his autoimmune gastritis gives him the worst heartburn of his miserable life.
