VC vampire: Peter Thiel wants to live forever

Just when you thought Peter Thiel couldn't become any more of a megalomaniac, the billionaire VC proves you wrong. The man from Silicon Valley who supports Donald Trump, and who funded Hulk Hogan's sex tape legal saga to hurt the publication that widely outed him, has gone full rich-person-crazy and decided that he needs to …

[Dadmin]

SNES Research Foundation

If you want to learn more about the SNES Research Foundation, you'll have to wait until Dr. Mario returns from the vampire transfusion clinic, or lunch. They are the same thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what to think; I need to hear Steve ¡Bong!'s take...

...this was just a little nocturnal humour about the children of the night, yes? Yes?!

[Youngone]

Damned with faint praise

"not demonstrably wrong," according to MIT's Technology Review.

Well, that's something I'd bet my life on then.

[The Man Who Fell To Earth]

Re: Damned with faint praise

MIT's Technology Review is just the PR arm of MIT's IP Office, always trying to shill MIT patents. Especially the 99% of MIT patents that are not worth the paper they are printed on.

[DrD'eath]

Re: Damned with faint praise

"Not demonstrably wrong" is a cornerstone of science, theories are only ever tentative, and can be accepted until proven wrong. This is Popper's concept of falsifiability.

Transfusion of blood from young mice to old mice seems to have a positive effect, http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/05/young-blood-renews-old-mice

So the old and rich wanting blood from the young is icky but not unreasonable. Though the idea of the old, rich and powerful living forever, sustained by the blood of the young and poor......time for the villagers to grab pitchforks and torches

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that someone has been reading Heinlein's 'Time Enough For Love'. So SF leads the way again.

[tom dial]

Not "Time Enough for Love," I think, but "Methuselah's Children," the first Lazarus Long story.

[tiggity]

Spinrad

Also made me think of Bug Jack Baron

[Anonymous Coward]

Thiel's been watching too much Simpsons?

(Mr. Burns and Smithers visit the morgue.)

Mr. Burns: Ah, nothing lifts my spirits like shopping. Let's see, (Points) I'll take his liver, a case of Adam's apples, (Points) that motorcycle man's mustache.

Smithers: Oh, the money you've contributed to anti-helmet laws has really paid off, sir.

Mr. Burns: Well, young people are my future.

[User McUser]

Re: Thiel's been watching too much Simpsons?

A far more relevant quote would be:

Burns: "You know, it's funny, Smithers. I tried every tincture and poultice and tonic and patent medicine there is, and all I really needed was the blood of a young boy."

(Episode 7F22 - "Blood Feud")

[Mark 85]

First cryrogenics and now this.

I guess the very rich don't believe in the words of Ben Franklin: "in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Since most of the very wealthy don't seem to pay taxes, I'm sure they think they can escape death.

[Anonymous Coward]

Would laugh if he ended up with an incurable blood-borne pathogen from all these transfusions.

[Anonymous Coward]

My bet's on something involving prions.

Meh.

Meeeeeeh.

Baaaa.

[Fungus Bob]

How do you kill a vampire with little hybrid cars driven by pretentious twats?

[Kanhef]

Garlic is not an onion

They are both alliums, but they are not interchangeable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Garlic is not an onion

Ceci, n'est pas un oignon

[perfgeek]

Don't Count on Gilroy

Alas, Garlic in Gilroy isn't what it used to be. 20+ years ago there were days you could smell the garlic in Gilroy all the way up in Sunnyvale. But since then garlic has been giving way to tract housing, so Gilroy may not be able to provide as much protection as you might think.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Don't Count on Gilroy

I wonder who's been funding all that garlic-displacing housing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this really surprising?

Most people fear death. Lots of us idly imagine ways to cheat it. Billionaires can put money to work indulging those idle dreams.

If this were all he did that would be pretty strange, but if I were super-rich I'd take a passing interest in life-extension efforts and throw a few bucks at some of them.

The ones he's chosen are... unusual. The principle? Not so much.

[Andrew Tyler 1]

Living Forever

I'm going to live forever and you are too. Yup. All you need is the right technobabble. What you do is combine the anthropic principle with the many worlds theory. The universe is the way it is because it has to be that way for me to be alive and perceiving it. If there are an infinite (or just a sufficiently large enough) number of universes where every possibility unfolds, there's one where through some freak but nevertheless physically possible coincidence I turn out to be immortal. Clearly that's the branch of the universe my existence will necessarily have to follow. Granted, life might suck a few million years from now, but I won't have a choice but to keep on collapsing the old waveforms for the sake of the universe. And, of course, it goes without saying you all are pretty lucky that I was born. Those of you who were born before me, you don't count. My ancestors in particular.

[Mystic Megabyte]

Re: Living Forever

" there's one where through some freak but nevertheless physically possible coincidence I turn out to be immortal."

Unfortunately that Universe has a habit of collapsing on Wednesdays :(

[Anonymous Coward]

Someday we'll conquer aging

And unfortunately it means bastards like Thiel will be around forever. Hopefully we both kick it before that happens.

[david 12]

Good times if you can afford it

This isn't going to make him live forever -- it's just going to make the present more pleasent.

Death is caused by heart failure subsequent to arteriosclerosis, or cancer, or car accidents, or stuff like that.

On the other hand, blood transfusion affects your steroid levels (better knees, back, and eyesight), and oxygenation levels (makes old people smarter, quicker, and more alive).

For whatever reason, he's going with blook transfusions instead of injectable steriods and EPO. If I was insanely rich, I might do the same.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good times if you can afford it

So really he should just get on his bike and join team US Postal Service ? :P

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good times if you can afford it

Some people caught AIDS through blood transfusions until the disease became more widely known and the donated blood tested. For all we know there's some new blood borne disease that hasn't yet been identified already out there. Your chances of acquiring such a disease via a blood transfusion go up massively if instead of maybe getting blood once or twice in your entire life you are getting it every other day.

Heck, are we testing donated blood for Zika yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Around every rich idiot there are people with good ideas to separate him from his money...

[VinceH]

He might want to live forever, but he'll probably die trying.

He has the wrong name for a vampire, though. Aubrey de Grey, though - that just screams vampire name to me.

[Arthur the cat]

He has the wrong name for a vampire

Ho could always change his name to Báthory. The coat of arms looks suitable for a barking mad VC.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're looking at oblivion & have a billion in the bank...

It must be tempting, perhaps even compelling... Such is the fear of dying / aging.... A while back I wrote a screenplay about billionaires doing experiments on 3rd world kids hoping to find the 'elixir of youth'. Still looking to get it made into a film, but reality & fiction meet once again I guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perpetual life will arrive too late for Thiel...

.....But for the children of Paypal, Google, FB, MS, Apple, Amazon founders, it is a possibility....

.....Certainly some kind of extended life. Imagine the dynasties of Wall-Street / Silicon-Valley easy money dominating every aspect of life. All little Dorian Gray's....

.....I have to work because there is no early retirement for the forgotten working middle class... Certainly no way to grow that kind of wealth or escape taxes etc. So live well for now I say.... I'm glad I won't be around to see this....

[LeisureSuitLarry]

Wow. I guess VCs really ARE blood sucking parasites.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what to do with Mr Thiel

Stake through the heart (if you can find it), hail of silver bullets or cut off the head?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So what to do with Mr Thiel

Just tell him it's perfectly ok to be really rich. Then he will lose almost all of his motivation and fade away :D

[BradJensen3]

Actually there is hard science behind this

They did a trial on mice where they found that infusing old mice with young mice's' blood got rid of age related markers in the blood, and seemed to rejuvenate the mice. Made them healthier and lice longer too.

There's also some science to suggest that aging has a lot to do with the robustness of your mitochondria, the 'factories' in your cells that process energy and create proteins that the cells need. A quick way to imp[rove those is to take L-Glycine, available at Amazon or your local health food store.

[breakfast]

Re: Actually there is hard science behind this

I just don't know that long lice are something you would want.

[Soulhand]

Eerily reminiscent of Bug Jack Barron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug_Jack_Barron

[Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese]

Prior art?

Didn't Keith Richards do something similar years ago...basically getting all of his blood replaced?

[x 7]

I've often wondered whether vampires like stuffing themselves with black puddings.

[DrJohnty]

What Peter Thiel is referring to is called Parabiosis and the evidence suggests young blood is beneficial but Peter is not that old. More interesting is Aubrey De Grey because one of the things he considers a vital area of research is senescent cell removal and the evidence very much supports him see http://www.nature.com/news/destroying-worn-out-cells-makes-mice-live-longer-1.19287