UNLIMITED

Newsweek

Meet the Doctor Who Sells Blood Plasma From Teens

It works on mice. Can it work on humans?
The concept of blood transfusions as an elixir of youth was the basis for season 4 episode 5 of Silicon Valley (entitled "Blood Boy").
07_21_YoungBlood_01

If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk. But if you give a mouse a transfusion of blood plasma from a much younger mouse, you can improve his cognitive and neurological functions—and reverse the effects of aging.

The scientific studies are fairly remarkable. In 2014, researchers at Stanford University demonstrated that infusion of young blood plasma in mice "is capable of rejuvenating synaptic plasticity and improving cognitive function." In other words, blood helps keep mice young.

Can this work on humans, too? Jesse Karmazin, a 32-year-old physician and graduate of Stanford University’s medical school, says yes. Karmazin is the founder of Ambrosia LLC, a company that is charging adults $8,000 to be injected with blood plasma from young people (ages 16-25). It's part of a clinical trial to test the anti-aging benefits of plasma transfusions. The trial passed ethical review, but you have to be 35 or older (and, well, able to scrounge up $8,000) to participate.

And, Karmazin insists,—the story of a man who ages in reverse.

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Newsweek

Newsweek1 min read
The Archives
“Making it worse are politicians who use abortion as reliable red meat for their supporters—both liberal and conservative—by continuing to beat the same drums America has heard for decades,” Newsweek wrote. Abortion was touted as a top issue in the 2
Newsweek13 min read
Spy In The Sky
CHINA’S AMBITION TO BE the world’s greatest space power is taking it to the Moon, to other planets—and to the sepia dust of Chile’s Atacama Desert. Here, in a lunar-looking landscape in the South American country, diggers are smoothing a rocky plain
Newsweek2 min read
Ray Romano
THE MAJOR THING ABOUT NETFLIX’S NO GOOD DEED THAT APPEALED TO Ray Romano was that it was unlike anything he’d done before. “I read about three scripts, and at the end of each there was a little twist, a little turn, [and] it was funny.” The dramedy s

Related Books & Audiobooks