Free Republic

In July 2024, I flew to a pop-up city named Vitalia that aimed to “make death optional.” Situated in the heart of a special economic zone on Roatan, a Honduran island, Vitalia advertised itself as a place to fast-track drug research outside of America’s burdensome regulatory constraints.The AI-generated pictures I’d seen made it look sleek and futuristic, like a cross between South Beach Miami and The Jetsons. Since its launch seven months before, Vitalia had attracted scientists, entrepreneurs, and crypto enthusiasts—among them longevity guru Bryan Johnson and Balaji S. Srinivasan, the author of The Network State. The special economic zone...

Anti-aging fanatic Bryan Johnson — who spends $2 million a year on a controversial regimen to beat back Father Time — debuted his much-touted Project Blueprint for those willing to pay $333-a-month to mimic his extreme routine. The millionaire tech mogul-turned-biohacker shared to X on Monday that applications were open to try out the 90-day “self-experimentation study” — for a minimum entry fee of $999. The strict diet provides participants with “67 interventions” in products that include a 6-ounce Longevity drink mix, eight supplements, Johnson’s signature Nutty Pudding Mix and extra virgin olive oil. In all, the “stack” of products...

In an effort to delay or possibly even reverse decrepitude, 45-year-old tech mogul Bryan Johnson has tapped his son's veins. Johnson sold his digital payments company Braintree to PayPal for $800 million in 2013, then started the brain-machine interface company Kernel. The technologist's millions reportedly did not bring him peace. Instead, he was left depressed, bordering on suicidal, haunted by the inevitability that the march of progress would one day leave him behind. TheBlaze reported earlier this year that Johnson had assembled a team of 30 doctors and was poised to spend $2 million a year on his body, admitting,...