Does extremely wealthy entrepreneur Peter Thiel -- one of the few openly gay men ever to speak at a Republican National Convention -- want to live forever? He certainly likes the idea of parabiosis, the process of injecting a younger person's blood into the body of an older one, ostensibly to keep the latter healthier.
Thiel's company, Thiel Capital, recently reached out to physician Jesse Karmazin, who had conducted a study on parabiosis in California, Inc. reports. Specifically, Jason Camm -- Thiel Capital's chief medical officer and Thiel's personal health director -- let Karmazin know that his boss was interested in the doctor's research, which actually injected people in their mid-30s and older with the blood of younger people.
"The effects seem to be almost permanent," Karmazin told Inc. "It's almost like there's a resetting of gene expression."
Studies of parabiosis, mostly conducted on rats in the 1950s, have indeed shown a reversal of aging. Thiel has directly expressed interest in monetizing parabiosis, though he's denied utilizing it himself. Gawker -- whose parent company Thiel bankrupted via a sex tape lawsuit from Hulk Hogan that he bankrolled, partly because the gossip site outed him years earlier -- claims that rumors in Silicon Valley indicate otherwise.
This isn't the first time Thiel has expressed interest in investing in immortality science. He's simply not resigned to dying, according to Inc.
"The way we deal with mortality is through some strange combination of acceptance and mortality," Thiel told the publication last year.
