Peter Thiel--co-founder of PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL), tech billionaire, philanthropist, personality extraordinaire when it comes to the tabloids--recently announced his profound and serious interest in pursuing parabiosis. It is a medical treatment aimed at de-aging, and partly involves injecting youthful red-blood cells into a patient's bloodstream in an attempt at self-rejuvenation, the idea being that new, compatible cells replace older, staler ones. Through taking blood, immortality is gained (or at minimum a hopefully longer life). While it is unclear if Mr. Thiel himself is undertaking these transfusions, his interest in them takes the form of much more than mild passing curiosity.
Is there any scientific feasibility to this pseudo-vampirism? Mr. Thiel has funded the studies of two scientists who have probed the possibility of immortality: Aubrey de Grey, a British theoretician, and Cynthia Kenyon, a molecular biologist. To date, he has cut cheques worth at least $3.5 million for de Grey's medical tests, in addition to funding non-profit ventures with the same goal. The efficacy of cell rejuvenation through gene therapy--tested through clinical trials at Stanford and Harvard this past year--has so far proven robust under scrutiny, and if made available on the pharmaceutical market, the value of the medicinal treatment could climb exponentially, carrying the market along with it.
There is an unsettling, possibly dystopian conclusion of such a privileged process that, if it works, is unavoidable to recognize--a wealthy immortal class subsisting off the literal blood of the lowly mortal ones. In short: a simple society that, aesthetically speaking, is composed of one-percent gods amongst the ninety-nine rest. It is an ugly, all too likely fact: the democratization of this so-called 'treatment' is unlikely to proceed at the same rate of its innovation.
Surprisingly, Mr. Thiel's view of mortality as an unacceptable contrivance is not an alien viewpoint to his Silicon Valley brethren. His own words ("Most people are in some weird mode of denial and acceptance about death, but they both have the result of making you very passive. I prefer to fight it") have expressed the sentiments of many billionaires trying to avoid dying, such as Oracle's (NASDAQ: ORCL) co-founder Larry Ellison and Google's (NASDAQ: GOOGL) founders, Sergei Brin and Larry Page. They themselves have also donated millions from their respective fortunes to find supposed cures for aging. Their general belief that aging is a disease is a reflection of the 'moonshot' thinking that suffuses 'the cradle of innovation.' In that sense, there is something admirable in Mr. Thiel's and his contemporaries' wish to push the boundaries of the human experience if not demolish them.
The more interesting questions deal with the entire concept of immortality itself, and here the philosophers enter to quarrel over semantics, struggling to define even a modicum of truth about the human condition. There are, of course, numerous arguments that the knowledge of one's own demise galvanizes one to accomplish as much as possible within the timeframe of their earthly existence. If immortality is possible, and even desirable, ought it be realized if it robs us of crucial motivation? If one can cheat death (the great equalizer as it were) through one's means or status, is it morally wrong or dishonest to one's fellow citizens? This does not even consider the possible ripple-effects immortality--or at least a significantly extended human lifespan--would have on economies, politics, culture, religion, and the progression of social justice. All heavy questions with heavier, untold answers.
While Peter Thiel is hardly concerned with such strictly intellectual matters no doubt, these are certainly future quandaries that will arise if he succeeds in curing that most deadly and persistent human affliction: a temporally finite life.
He has so far refused to comment on the amount of media attention his remarks have brought him. His determination -- or perhaps more aptly, his hubris -- does not appear to be fading.