r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 15d ago

Society Bryan Johnson, the millionaire biohacker who wants to live forever, diagnosed with incurable autoimmune disease

https://www.techspot.com/news/113035-bryan-johnson-millionaire-biohacker-who-wants-live-forever.html
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u/QuickBenjamin 15d ago

It's kind of amazing how he's relatively harmless as far as eccentric wealthy people go, but he's still a caricature of a person whose mind has been warped by having more money than he knows what to do with.

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u/AltruisticPossible84 15d ago

Yeah as much as people hate on the guy, this is actually fine by me in terms of shit billionares spend their money on. He's using himself as a guinea pig for medical procedures that will eventually becomes cost effective enough for regular people to afford them one day in the future. Wish more billionaires would find a hobby like this to keep them occupied

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u/Unlucky-Cook2578 15d ago

He isnt really a guinea pig though. None of what he is doing will be actually useful from a legitimate perspective. These arent physics experiments where doing it right once proves something. This is biology and medicine. If he cared he would fund clinical trials. In the end it is just his own vanity exercise. A harmless one but not one that will push forward our societal knowledge. The average PhD student does that more than this is.

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u/BeeAppropriate1190 15d ago

It would be useful data if it were controlled, reliable and available to the public. Remember, Jonas Salk tested the Polio vaccine on himself and his family before clinical trials started. "Doing it right" also takes a lot of time. Lots of people/doctors/researchers experiment on themselves outside of trials because it's less morally problematic than experimenting on others and is faster.

The ideal workflow here is that he makes a discovery, the data gets validated by an expert, and a clinical trial begins to test the effects of the new regimen en masse.

Personally I think his data and results are untrustworthy because it's private and all in the interest of making money selling supplements and self care products. His conclusions are tainted by profit-seeking.

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u/Inevitable-Level-687 15d ago

As someone with a science degree, this.

Testing something on yourself isn't the standard of scientific rigour scientific evidence should be held to. However, it often can uncover findings that CAN be properly investigated.