An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people | Hacker News Reader

An anti-ageing startup is offering transfusions of blood from young people

vanityfair.com

63 pointsrobzyb75 comments

They buy the blood from blood banks, so people donating blood don't know it's going to paranoid rich people instead of sick people, and they don't get any of the money!

Edit: I thought it was illegal in the USA to pay for body parts, but there is an exception for plasma (and maybe the rest of the blood?). But it's already predatory http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/business/06plasma.html and this new business only makes it look worse.

"His start-up, Ambrosia, is charging about $8,000 a pop for blood transfusions"

And a quick google search says that people donating to a blood bank get $20 to $60 a pint, and the blood banks sell for $200-$600 a pint.

I wonder if blood banks will figure out the model here and sell direct.

Blood banks in the US tend not to pay for whole blood.

Plasma donations are often paid though.

Hmm. Apparently to discourage people with diseases from selling their blood. The plasma doesn't have the issue due to how it is processed, broken down, and used.

As mentioned, though, this creates an odd situation. The donor is sort of misled that they are doing something charitable, which is clearly not the case here.

Blood banks do have plenty of real costs and a payment to the donator would just get passed through to the patients receiving the blood.

It looks like I donate to a for profit organization, but for instance, the Red Cross isn't paying shareholders profits from the blood they sell.

Paying for blood, and the ethical issues around that, reminds me of pharmacies giving out gift cards and other discounts for flu shots. I recall CVS was giving out a $25 gift card to anyone who got a flu shot, and I imagined a lot of low income and poor people lining up for a shot they may not need, and in fact may be harmful, just to get money to buy food, etc.

> I imagined a lot of low income and poor people lining up for a shot they may not need, and in fact may be harmful

That's an interesting spin, which may be true of other types of injection. However for flu shots, it can save lives (the poor are particularly susceptible and potentially focal for infection clusters). In that way the financial incentive is progressive.

Does the flu shot save lives? Various outlets report the vaccine may only be roughly 50% effective [0] which seems little more than a coin toss. They're pushed very hard in these drug stores, every time you check out, signs everywhere, plus the financial incentives. I wonder what the danger would be to a poor person to getting a flu shot multiple times?

[0] http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/16/health/flu-shot-effective-cdc-...

Blood banks don't usually pay for blood. That's why it's called donating... If someone is paying for blood where do I sign up because I could use the money.. :-/

Elsewhere in the thread, but the nuance is what it is used for. You can get paid if it ends up as plasma.

I had friends who sold plasma to get through college. Like 50-100 each time they went.

There's a concept in economics whereby the gains from trade tend to accumulate to the owners of "fixed resources" in a system. In this case that would be the people selling the blood. So I would expect that in the long run the market would stabilize with people selling their blood getting paid the full worth of their blood (decreased by transaction costs of all the middlemen involved in getting the blood to other people, of course).

The reasoning is that if a blood bank is trying to grab a bigger slice of the pie than just its operating costs, a second blood bank can open and compete with the first one on price, and the only equilibrium is to have blood banks charging exactly at cost and no more.

Since you say that the business is predatory on the blood donors, do you think it's just that the market hasn't had time to settle, or that there's some funny business in this market maybe?

I think the problem of the sale of blood isn't people not getting paid fairly for their blood in the purely economic sense. There's no reason to think that the "full worth" of blood is that high since producing blood is pretty common "skill".

The problem is abetting those desperate to sell their blood and body parts are going to be abetting the downward spiral such people tend to be on. The most blood donors are homeless and drug addicts. Donating blood doesn't make someone more able to find a job, housing etc because it's a literal drain on their vitality.

That is a good point and I am somewhat concerned about that. If the decision were put to me I would personally have to think long and hard about whether it's actually good for society to let people sell their body parts. But it's still helpful to have a clear economic picture of what is going to be affecting the market price of these things and that's fun to think about so I try to focus on that.

But do we want to allow rich vampires to drive the price of blood up? It seems to me that maybe blood shouldn't be treated like a commodity which is driven by the market. Most people receiving blood are not exactly in a position to turn it down or shop around and so some technologists driving the price up to $8,000 is going to hurt you.

To the extent it's a competitive market (and it seems like it would be-- a lot of potential buyers and sellers), the price should be determined by the minimum average cost, not by the willingness/ability of the buyer to pay. This outcome is not dependent on the ability of the buyer to walk away (as you note, their life might depend on it so some of them can't), but on the sellers pursuing their self interest which we can probably count on them to do.

It may turn out to be a competitive market, I just don't think it should be. In a truly competitive market Peter Thiel could just outbid a sick person for a particularly choice pint. In this market system whether a person gets blood or not will depend on their ability to pay for it not their need of it.

Right, I'd be curious what the deal is here. Are they buying blood or plasma? Are the donors compensated? Or do they think they are helping burn victims and end up helping Covfefe supporters?

I've long that people should be allowed to profit from selling their bodies /organs to medicine (especially after they die -- ie selling options), but it seems that only others can profit from your donation for the most part.

"So high-schoolers donating their blood are not aware that it might be used on healthy adults." http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/blood-transfusions-from-teena... Really it's the lack of transparency and the payment imbalance that concern me.

How is this not charity fraud?

If I donate to earthquake victims, I expect at least a portion of my donation to end up in the hands of earthquake victims.

If I donate whole blood to help those with medical needs, then I expect at least a portion of my donation to end up in the bloodsteam of someone with a genuine medical need.

The US has outlawed paid whole blood donations, so EVERY whole blood donation in the US is an act of charity.

It's unlikely the blood banks involved have made any misrepresentations.

It'd be interesting to see what Ambrosia told the blood banks though.

All of the 'science' links reference studies on plasma - and their website even. https://www.ambrosiaplasma.com/ . So they are using plasma, which it's legal for a person/donor to sell.

Is there any way to find out what blood-banks, and if it's disclosed to the donors that this is where the blood is going? I'd donate to a donor awareness campaign for these blood banks.. If they are not disclosing, I suspect their donations would take a hit if people found out their donation might not go to burn victims or cancer patients, and instead go to modern day Ian McCandless's.

For clarity, it appears to be plasma and not whole blood: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/young-blood-antiaging...

One of the NPR shows also did a show on the blood biz. In short, if you give blood, someone is making a buck off that donation.

maybe the blood banks need money to run their operations more than they need blood...

Then they should ask for money instead of blood.

maybe people are more willing to donate blood than money

I love that, true to form for the U.S.'s peculiar flavor of capitalism, the producers can't legally sell their product, but those who receive the donations can, leading to a company whose value-add is apparently advertising and customer service creating yet another creepy service for rich paranoids.

Think I'll be checking with the place I occasionally donate to and see where theirs ends up. If they need money, they can ask for that; reselling what I thought was going to hospitals, etc. to these literal vampires is not, ah, kosher with me.

This will discourage voluntery doners from blood donation. It's really shame that there is no regulations to prevent this behavior.

I hope it does. If we need to ruin the system to rebuild it then so be it. But it is colossally fucked up that we ask/pressure teenagers to give blood without compensation. It's fucked up that we don't tell them, "we're going to sell this for $1000, and use that money to help pay our CEO $10,000,000 this year."

reselling what I thought was going to hospitals, etc. to these literal vampires is not, ah, kosher with me.

Ok so... blood does have an expiration date, at which point the blood banks must throw it out. If the supply of donated blood is less than the demand of patients for the blood, then what's wrong with a company recouping their costs by selling almost expired blood to millionaires who don't need it? It didn't say anything in the article about how fresh the blood is, but if what I describe is what is going on, then I don't see the moral issue.

That is a possible scenario. There is still a moral issue, that of deception. If you're begging on the street for donations to fund a homeless shelter, those giving would likely be unpleasantly surprised to find the shelter uses the money to build luxury housing to additionally fund the shelter. Even if it is a solid strategy, you're still deceiving people to encourage them to donate.

And if there are more rich paranoids than I think and there is real demand for this, what do you want to bet on the expiry date creeping back or similar shenanigans?

Putting aside the ookiness factor, the science here seems pretty tenuous. "Self-reported improvements that scientists have been unable to replicate in clinical trials" are what's behind every questionable medical practice from homepathy to crystal healing.

Especially given the time and money involved in having to get regular transfusions, I'd think the practitioners would be better off using the time to spend an extra hour in the gym.

> "Self-reported improvements that scientists have been unable to replicate in clinical trials"

I'm not sure where this quote comes from or even if it's a quote, but over the last couple of years I often read about studies proving just what this controversial startup claims. Reversing aging in mice and better healing through younger blood. The ability to use pre existing stem cells through transfusions of "younger blood" and such. I'm not sure what to think of it especially since it was only tested on mice and I didn't check the credentials of the researchers, but a quick search turned up multiple hits:

https//arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/component-of-human-umbilical-cord-blood-perks-up-the-minds-of-old-mice/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130325093659.h...

I remember another article that I couldn't find right now, but claiming a non reproducibility seems wrong.

Again wouldn't go to this startup and think that many things are wrong here, but plausible at least.

Plus the small but non-zero risk when receiving a transfusion. Disease screening isn't perfect and there are other risks too.

I wonder how much of the improvements are attributed to having more red blood cells in your body that normal, which would allow you to carry more oxygen. This is the theory behind blood doping in sports.

i.e. medical researchers know how to add control groups for placebo effect, amateurs do not.

Without knowing how reputable any of this is, I'm somehow not shocked to hear Peter Thiel is interested in medically unnecessary blood transfusions. This could be totally fake, but just based on what I know about him from news, this seems like a perfectly plausible and normal for Peter Thiel interest.

Here's a prior article about this startup and Peter Thiel:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to-...

There is already a shortage of plasma and blood for people with real medical conditions that need treatment.

Consider in IVIG treatments that thousands of plasma donations are needed to make a SINGLE treatment dose and most people receiving these treatments have chronic diseases requiring ongoing treatment, so for just a single patient for one year you are talking about in excess of 10,000 donations needed.

But hey; lets just sell it all to the Peter Thiels of the world so we can keep them alive forever...

“I don’t want to say the word panacea, but here’s something about teenagers, whatever is in young blood is causing changes that appear to make the aging process reverse.”

Sounds like the most stereotypical trope of snake oil.

The title should be "a scam startup is stealing money from fool people".

And blood from injured people.

This remembers the death of Gianbattista Cibo in 1492, or Pope Inmocent VIII, and an attempt from a foreign doctor to revive him on his deathbed by blood transfusions from three young male children (who died as well in the process).

Interesting piece on the wiki page: there appears to be confusion re: drinking blood vs transfusion.

From what I understand, Ambrosia is transfusing plasma, not whole blood.

There are a number of studies, going back many years, suggesting that young blood has a rejuvenating effect in older animals.

I have been using bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to develop therapies for stroke and other forms of neural injury for more than a decade. What is particularly striking, is the effect of age upon these cells is quite obvious, both in vitro and therapeutically. In our own work, we found that when we treated stroked older animals with syngeneic MSCs from younger mice, they recovered much better than if they were treated with aged-matched MSCs.

What is even more interesting IMO, is that a couple of groups have reported that transplantation of young-to-old bone marrow, or just young-to-old MSCs significantly extends lifespan in mice. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23967009 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22355586

Based on the value of preserving your own autologous bone marrow stem cells, and their potential to be used in self young-to-old rejuvenating transplantation, I co-founded https://foreverlabs.com. In short, we cryopreserve your own bone marrow stem cells, to be used later in life. It's much like cord blood stem cell storage, but for adults.

The blood is born out of the bone marrow. Furthermore, the bone marrow cells (including MSCs) produce many soluble factors (proteins, cytokins, microvesicles, non-coding RNAs, etc.) that can significantly alter the blood profile. Thus, there is reason to believe that the parabiosis or the 'young blood effect' could be conferred by rejuvenating the bone marrow niche. Indeed, we this might be happening in the studies cited above.

We just launched our own version of a young-to-old bone marrow stem cell transplantation study in mice. It is our goal to better understand and optimize the young-to-old bone marrow transplantation effect, and to eventually offer the ability for our clients to donate their own younger bone marrow to their older selves (in addition to providing a store of young cells for other potential therapies).

There is much work to be done, but IMO there is real opportunity for a health-maintenance approach to medicine, and this is one of them. Disease treatment will not long remain as the most rational or economical approach to healthcare.

In the meantime people who need transfusions because they have kidney failure they might have a hard time getting them.

do you want free blood? are you a communist European?!

...now grab the popcorn and see how the people against free healthcare is going to rationalize a defense for this.

More traditional clinical trial is being run by Stanford. Estimated completion was January 2017, but data is not posted yet.

The official title is "The PLasma for Alzheimer SymptoM Amelioration (PLASMA) Study: Intravenously-Administered Plasma From Young Donors for Treatment of Mild-To-Moderate Alzheimer's Disease". More on https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02256306

Who knew that Countess Bathory was a visionary entrepreneur?

VaaS. Vampirism as a service. Brilliant!

This is another one of those things that makes me fear that open class warfare is imminent, with torches, pitchforks, guillotines, and all the accessories.

Their website looks like it was designed in FrontPage 2002: https://www.ambrosiaplasma.com - The whole thing is super weird. As someone who has an interest in transfusion medicine, I would absolutely not do this.

I was concerned about this because I'm scheduled to donate blood later today so I contacted the American Red Cross on Facebook and asked if they had ever sold blood to Ambrosia.

"The Red Cross has no record of providing blood to this organization."

So Ambrosia must be getting their blood from another supplier.

there is a bad 80s made for tv movie (or maybe a twilight zone ep) where a convenience store worker finds out the store is a front for stealing young's people blood so old rich people can live forever. in the end he run away and one of the old rich customer hold the pursuit saying "don't worry, he will be back eventually"

...and now it's lucrative pseudo science. sigh. maybe if they find the director he can be their very own hon Hubbard!

Now you too can have your own blood boy. Careful that your donor has good habits, or your cholesterol might go through the roof. At that rate, you might die by 120!

For those of you confused, it's a reference to a recent episode of Silicon Valley, which actually covered this.

Anyone watch the Strain? http://the-strain.wikia.com/wiki/Eldritch_Palmer

The old taking the vigor of the youth; what an apt metaphor.

It's just like social security!

If we are on the verge of cultured meats of various types, is blood that far behind?

Every millionaire wants their personal blood boy :)

I always suspected Peter Thiel was a vampire.

Thought Silicon Valley TV show was a comedy.

It's a documentary.

Mike Judge should own ten percent of this company, since the idea came out of his incubator.

It's satire.

I'm pretty sure its actually a documentary

Life is satire?

It's both.

Satire typically has a comedic element to it.

It's the future that you chose.

Start-ups in the health care field have difficulty managing their HIPAA / HITECH compliance. You would have to be a special kind of idiot to allow them anywhere near your blood.

vampires

Blood vampires & financial vampires combined! Horrible..

just make it a market, regulate it to ensure there's no abuse and let people sell their blood if they want to. this could lead to improvements in people's health - to donate your blood it gets tested for diseases.

edit: grammar

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