Humans have always raged against the dying of the light. The oldest surviving literary work—the Epic of Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian poem composed over four thousand years ago—concerns the attempt of its protagonist to achieve eternal life, before he realizes it is a futile quest and settles instead for the consolation prize of wisdom. 

That should have been the end of the matter, but countless real-life figures throughout history have attempted to channel their wealth and power into evading death. Quin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, was so obsessed with finding an “elixir of life” that he may have died of mercury poisoning after drinking a fraudulent concoction. And at the end of the 16th century, legend has it that the Hungarian countess (and purported serial killer) Elizabeth Báthory sought to achieve eternal youth by bathing in the blood of virgins—a literal bloodbath. She died at 54.  

As far-fetched as this may seem, the life-extending methods of today’s elites carry echoes of this past: Bryan Johnson—a venture capitalist and the new poster boy for eternal life—cheerfully admits to any journalist who will listen that he has received blood transfusions from his 19-year-old son.

The immortality business is booming. While few of its proponents will admit to aiming for the outright abolition of death, life extension is a growing industry that enjoys the backing of some of the world’s most powerful men, including tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos, and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brine. At present, the most promising avenues of research involve medications that reverse the aging of cells: Studies found that one drug—rapamycin—is effective at extending the life of mice, and human trials are already underway. But we are still nowhere close to significantly extending the average human lifespan, never mind expanding it indefinitely.¹