As a skeptic, whenever I see an article on something science-y that looks a little too good to be true, my radar goes up. More often than not, what I’ve read isn’t true, or at the very least, none of the findings have been independently verified.
The latest, is this article from Science Alert. It seems there’s a treatment for aging that is about to go live in New York City later this year. The process involves transfusing blood from young donors to older people. According to the founder, by doing this, the blood will hopefully rejuvenate the organs in the older recipient thereby stemming the aging process.
Seems a bit sketchy to me. There’s nothing inherently dangerous in the procedure as hospitals perform transfusions on patients all the time so there’s no special approval needed from the FDA to perform an already approved medical treatment.
What’s strange is that in all the time that these thousands of transfusions have occurred over the decades, no one has ever noticed that a transfusion has ever affected the recipients organs. Of course, the company, Ambrosia ,says that they have performed clinical trials and that during the trial, saw some interesting things. Whatever that means.
No, the data have yet to be published and we will all be waiting with baited breath for those results, won’t we? Will they also release all of the protocols as well so that their findings may be independently verified? Of course we have no idea and to me, I’m doubtful, because this is a commercial business startup, that anyone ever will.
The process is probably not going to be cheap either. Those in the trial had to pay $8,000 each to participate. I would expect that price will increase dramatically. The company also says that they already have a waiting list of potential customers.
If people want to pay for a completely unproven treatment, well hey, it’s their money. It’s done all the time, everywhere. Just walk into any pharmacy and notice the shelves filled with homeopathic remedies. If they didn’t sell, they wouldn’t be there. And until the health of those purchasing any of these treatments are placed in jeopardy, we’ll continue to see them as well as anti-aging procedures like this one.
Conservative Skeptic 
This is outrageous!
For one thing, a blood transfusion certainly is “inherently dangerous.”
This whole thing is SO illegal that I cannot believe it would ever get up and running.
It’s some sort of Internet fake news or something.
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You’re right in the sense that any medical procedure, no matter how minor, may be inherently dangerous. But blood transfusions are FDA approved procedures and if administered by a professional, are less so, and therefore not illegal.
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Are they doing complete blood exchange? This is bizarre! But…actually not unexpected. People with body dysmorphia go to great lengths and expense to keep their bodies in what they consider to be perfection. The concept of youth as perfection is as old as human vanity…and that is very old.
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In the article, the trial was 1.5 liters. It doesn’t say anything about a complete transfusion, so I am not sure.
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