"Avoiding death is something you and I must strive to do."
In April 2021, Bezos, the founder of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce company, said in his last shareholder letter before stepping down as CEO. Five months later, he and Yuri Milner, a billionaire Russian billionaire with a $4.8 billion fortune, invested in a biotech company called Altos Labs.
Altos Labs' goal is to push bioreprogramming technology forward. Some scientists believe that this technology can rejuvenate the entire body, thereby extending human lifespan, and Bezos shares the same idea as ChatGPT founder Sam Altman, whose little-known investment was announced by MIT Technology Review after the explosion of ChatGPT, not artificial intelligence, let alone new energy, but "against time" technology.
More specifically, he wants to extend the average life expectancy of humans by another 10 years.
1. The time business is hotter than expected
In the eyes of scientists, death is like an accident, and finding the location of the fault is one step closer to conquering death. Before clearing the game of "death overcoming", delaying the coming of death is undoubtedly a more pragmatic goal.
On May 23, 45-year-old American super-rich Brian Johnson took his 17-year-old son and 70-year-old father for an appalling "blood exchange rejuvenation" treatment, which he believes will help him have the same energy as his own child.
In fact, in pursuit of physiological regression, Brian has assembled a medical team with multiple "rejuvenation programs" to oversee his routine and be responsible for his eternal youth. Today, his biological age has regressed by nearly 6 years, and Brian, 45, has a 37-year-old heart, 28-year-old skin, and 28-year-old lung capacity and health.
What is more unexpected is that the service cost paid by Brian is only "2 million US dollars per year", and in the East, the professional anti-aging service team dedicated to the Chinese people came a little later. In 2019, a group of famous biomedical teams who love longevity technology formed the "Time School", which integrated the popularization of aging, detection and intervention with an almost unique attitude, and quickly gained the first "million fans".
In the context of the lack of standard aging detection systems in the world, the Timeschool team developed the first internationally recognized detection system with a widely recognized basic framework, and later launched a number of intervention programs.
"Professional enough" is the first feeling of Li Li (pseudonym) from Shanghai, after testing, he carried out a one-year intervention in 2021, and the test data issued by Adicon Medical Laboratory Center in 2022 showed that Li Li's telomere index reversed by 6.5 years. Telomeres are one of the important indicators to measure the aging of body cells, and several studies have confirmed that shorter telomere states are closely related to a number of health indicators, also known as the "life clock".
In the rich circles of Europe and the United States, full of a large number of private medical service teams, singer Justin Bieber revealed in the documentary "Seasons" that he likes to recuperate in the oxygen cabin; Ronaldo uses a freezer to stimulate recovery after training, and the rich are always happy about how to stay healthy. The person in charge of Timepai Shanghai said that due to the previous epidemic and other factors, since 2022, the middle class that books Timeschool's aging management services has reached a new high.
2. Middle-class face
As of 2021, a total of 23,000 companies around the world have invested in the field of aging suppression, with the leading United States alone with a total investment of $256 billion, followed by China with $31 billion, almost doubling the domestic market compared to two years ago.
In ancient times, emperors regarded the annexation of Jindan as a "shortcut to age", and its essence under the veil of mystery was nothing more than medical intervention. In modern times, with the influx of capital, human scientific research and development to fight time and delay aging has achieved more results.
According to the person in charge of Time, under the blessing of modern medicine, the intervention of aging has been very detailed, in addition to conventional medical intervention, TimeCure (Longevity Clinic) under TimeStream also includes customized dietary nutrition intervention, behavioral intervention, device intervention, etc., and in terms of the experience of the intervention process, this all-round customized service is also new and high-end.
After the pandemic, especially the urban middle class with higher income levels, the thirst for "health" and "longevity" has further released the market demand for anti-aging.
According to a survey data, more than one-fifth of ordinary middle-aged and elderly people spend more than 2,000 yuan a month, and it is common for top rich people to spend millions of yuan to fight time. Once the "Time Ark" treatment program of the Time School was launched, the official website received a large number of middle-class appointments. Although the price of 1 million yuan is not cheap, according to the staff, the number of appointments for the plan is still scheduled for two years.
In the final analysis, the confrontation time is still just a "rich man's game", hundreds of thousands of yuan of consumption at every turn allows the audience to be accurately screened, customized aging management services have become a social currency, then the middle class participating in the time ark, while adding value to the brand, is undoubtedly achieving self-satisfaction at the social level.
3. Time buys and sells, just in time
When Jobs used expensive medical treatment to extend his life by 8 years, people lamented that "immortality" may no longer be out of reach.
Up to now, there are at least 22 theories of aging mechanisms that believe that aging is an accumulation process that can slow down or even reverse this process. So Brian Johnson's "blueprint program" continues: daily fitness, dozens of nutritional supplements, electromagnetic pulses; Sam Altman, the father of ChatGPT, invested in technology and experienced fasting and metformin firsthand.
With longevity burning, who can refuse to experience some of the latest research? As Harari mentions in A Brief History of the Future, there will be three major issues facing human society in the future: ending death, attaining happiness and joy, and making people gods.
Perhaps humanity has already taken the first step.