The Axios Show: Bryan Johnson's prescription for immortality
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Tech entrepreneur turned wellness influencer Bryan Johnson wants to be remembered as a longevity pioneer, telling The Axios Show" that he wants people to embrace the idea that they may never experience death.
Why it matters: Johnson and his online brand Blueprint have become the personification of a controversial wellness culture that believes aging can be a solvable problem, if you measure the body's physiological functions enough.
- The question is whether all the data collection aided by AI can really slow aging, or whether it's biohacking with a fancy dashboard.
What they're saying: "We are at this inflection moment as a species where we are transitioning to don't die. And that means we have a different value system," Johnson, who's 49, tells Axios.
- "So what creates status and power and prestige is going to be different. And as crazy as it sounds, it may be your nighttime erections. It may be your fertility strength. It may be your ability to dunk a basketball at age 49."
Zoom in: Johnson made his fortune with Braintree, a payment technology firm that he later sold to PayPal. Since then, he's been at the vanguard of a longevity boom driven by billionaire tech entrepreneurs seeking to extend their lives and, in some cases, share their experiences on social media.
- Johnson's "Don't Die" mantra is built around protocols he's subjected himself to, including regular blood-testing, whole-body MRIs, and sleep, exercise and nutrition hacks.
- Long term, he's outlined a vision in which advanced diagnostic tools and next-generation therapies can make chronic illness curable, not just something to manage.
- He likens the evolution of Blueprint to Amazon, scaling up offerings from nutrition products to high-end concierge care and technology he says allows people to measure the effectiveness of GLP-1s and peptides.
- Its rise has coincided with a DIY health movement, in which patients frustrated with the medical system are seeking to self-manage more of their care — sometimes with heavily touted but loosely regulated products that haven't been shown to work.
Yes, but: There is no proven medical intervention that extends human life. One early-stage clinical trial is exploring whether a gene therapy can safely "reprogram" human cells, a requirement for any anti-aging claim.
- Johnson's health-support claims are largely built on personal results and haven't been validated by trials.
- He's also drawn criticism in medical circles for questionable practices like using donor plasma from his young son as an anti-aging treatment, a practice that's drawn warnings from the Food and Drug Administration for having no clinical benefit and carrying risks.
Zoom out: Combining exercise and adequate sleep with experimental treatments and stacks of supplements can make it difficult to separate the substance from the hype.
- Johnson concedes he's a performance artist. And with 8 million social media followers and a flair for self-promotion, he isn't without his detractors.
- Diagnosed with hypothyroidism at age 21, Johnson tells Axios he's trying to "carbon date" his autoimmune conditions to shut down critics who question whether his health interventions have caused him harm. Many critics "really want me to die," he adds.
He brushes off suggestions that instead of focusing on himself, he could fund clinical trials that would benefit humanity. Those kinds of trial findings would be "insignificant in the grand scheme of things," he says.
- "What I care about is, will the 25th century give me a head nod, be like, 'Thank you.' ... That's the goal. Can you change the species to think about themselves differently enough?"
Asked what advice he'd give President Trump, Johnson says he'd welcome the chance to take care of his health.
- "Surely he's got the best possible care," Johnson says. "But you know what? Doctors miss things all the time. Biden had many things that are missing. And so my experience has been when I jump into a situation, I can usually find several areas of improvement instantaneously just because we're so non-standard in what we do."
