Jeff Bezos Invests in 'Immortality' Company transcript

Who wants to live forever? Jeff Bezos might, actually. In 2021, the Amazon founder reportedly made a significant investment in a company called Altos Labs, a biotechnology company that claims to specialize in cellular rejuvenation therapy, that says it aims to restore cell health and resilience to reverse disease, injury, and disabilities that occur throughout life. That sounds impressive in its own right, but wait until you hear the hook.

According to Altos Labs' Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, within two decades, the company's research could yield the tools to predict, prevent and treat diseases and aging through cellular rejuvenation. Optimistic perhaps, but Belmonte's research suggests that this scientific Fountain of Youth may not be as far-fetched as it seems. In an experiment at the Salk Institute in 2016, his team was able to manipulate a set of rejuvenating genes and mice in such a way that it prompted some of their cells to revert to an embryonic state and the mice in the experiment lived 30% longer.

But Belmonte has since said that he finds no reason science couldn't achieve similar results with human patients. That's a tantalizing idea that medical science could be used to activate just the right genes to slow or reverse aging, but despite rumors around Jeff Bezos' investment in the company being a bid for immortality, Belmonte says that's not necessarily what Altos Labs is trying to achieve. It's not about making it possible for humans to live a 100 or even 1000 Years longer, he told Spanish newspaper El Pais, but to improve human quality of life.

Specifically, he said, if we are able to prolong life without improving the quality of these years, Not only would it be morally questionable but also, I would question what purpose it would serve. Our main goal is to enable people to have a healthier life for a longer period of time and to reverse illness and patients of all ages. So, even if immortality isn't when Altos Labs is going for there's still reason to root for their researchers to succeed.

If everything goes to plan the company's cellular rejuvenation therapy could make the time we already have on this Earth just a little bit better. So maybe Jeff Bezos latest funding project won't pan out as a way to cheat death, but if you're looking there are options, this is the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. A company that cryogenically freezes, stores, and hopes to one day revive the clinically dead. In short, this company uses a blend of medical grade antifreeze to vitrify the recently deceased, freezing them into a glass-like state before storing them in a container cooled by liquid nitrogen.

Currently, Alcor stores about 190 bodies that have gone through this process and although every single one of them is clinically dead. The company is confident that it'll get to see these patients alive and kicking again someday. Our best estimates are that within 50 to 100 years, we will have the medical technologies needed to restore our patients to health and function. How exactly it's going to revive these patients requires a little imagination and Alcor has plenty.

The company envisions a future where cryogenically frozen patients will be restored to life either by being repaired by medical nanobots, called CryoBots, or by scanning a deceased patients brain and simulating it on what the company calls a whole brain emulator, effectively allowing them to return to life, as an immortal synthetic life-form. sound like a long shot? Maybe it is, but you probably have a better chance of coming back to life after being preserved in a cryogenics pod than you would if you were cremated.

Either way the chance to find out will set you back somewhere between 80 and 200,000 dollars. That's not exactly Jeff Bezos money, but it is pretty pricey. What would you pay for a chance, even a slim one, at immortality?