Unit 1: Immortality 2.0 (1ère G6)

Young Blood, Old Dreams

The document under study is an article from Popular Mechanics magazine, published in 20. It deals with how some scientists tried to use blood to improve human health. For example, the start up Ambrosia was created by Jesse Karmazin, a former Stanford Medical student. He promised that his blood plasma infusions would help people look younger, would strengthen them, would improve sleep and even would treat Alzheimer disease. One infusion of blood plasma cost $8,000, which shows that this treatment was targeting at only rich people. Eventually, the US authorities did not accept his treatment. They even stopped his activity because they had no scientific proof that it could work.

This concept of using young blood to stay young is not new, for instance Pope Innocent VIII a thousand years ago drank the blood of young boys to try to heal himself. Moreover, in ancient Rome, blood was used for rejuvenating purposes. In fact, they would take the blood of wounded gladiators to capture their “life force”.

Nevertheless, in the 1920s, A. Bogdanov gave himself young blood transfusions to be healthier. However, on his twelfth transfusion, he caught diseases: malaria and tuberculosis that killed him at the age of 54. This shows that this type of experiment are very dangerous for human bodies. To conclude, the fact that J. Karmazin refused to say where the plasma came from. It highlights that there is a lack of transparency and that this type of procedure cannot be trustworthy.

Homework: Learn the lesson.