This middle-aged technician spends $2 million a year to stop aging. . . and exchanges blood with his teenage son

How much would you pay to stop the effects of aging? At least one man is willing to spend millions of dollars a year in this quest.

Tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson (former head of Braintree, which once owned Venmo) is spending $2 million a year trying to slow or completely reverse the aging process, Bloomberg reported Monday. Part of his plan involves trading blood with his father and son, in a process that sounds straight out of a science fiction novel – or that episode of Silicon Valley.

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Yet it’s completely real, and reporter Ashlee Vance accompanied Johnson, 45, and his family to the clinic where they are undergoing the procedure. Talmage, Johnson’s 17-year-old son, had a liter of blood taken and reduced into its different parts (plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets). Johnson does the same, then has Talmage’s plasma given to him. Finally, Johnson’s 70-year-old father, Richard, also disposes of his blood, then takes Johnson’s plasma.

Johnson has been doing this for months, although he started with plasma from an anonymous donor. It’s all part of his attempt to slow aging, something he called Project Blueprint. Along with plasma infusions, he adapted his eating, sleeping, and exercise habits to reach the pinnacle of the human condition, but his experiments with blood are by far the ones that get the most attention.

Plasma infusions are typically used to treat conditions such as liver disease, burns, and blood disorders, but more recently they are associated with rejuvenation therapy. Experiments with mice have shown potential benefits, but studies in humans are rare and some researchers warn against elective transfusions in healthy people.

“We haven’t learned enough to suggest that this is a viable human treatment for anything,” Charles Brenner, a biochemist at City of Hope National Medical Center in Los Angeles, told Bloomberg. “To me it’s disgusting, unproven and relatively dangerous.”

Johnson’s medical team approved the transfusions, however, and Johnson is closely measuring the performance of his blood, brain and organs. Ultimately, he hopes to share this data with the public, using himself and his family as a human test in the field of anti-aging.

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