The Tech Bro Using Risky Gene Therapy and Vampiric Blood Transfusions to Be Immortal

Bryan Johnson, who’s spending hundreds of millions of dollars on treatments designed to extend his life, is many things to many people: a daring pioneer and a reckless fool; a selfless crusader and an extreme narcissist; a medical subject and a cult leader; and a boundary-pushing rebel and a creepy weirdo.

Having made headlines over the past few years courtesy of his efforts to turn back (or at least radically slow down) the hands of time, Johnson now gets a chance to tell his story in Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever. If the Netflix film, which premiered Jan. 1, is another in a long line of documentaries that trade access for going soft on their subject, director Chris Smith’s latest nonetheless includes enough critical voices and material to complicate Johnson’s view about his actions and ethos—in the process undercutting the material’s superficial optimism.

Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever is driven by interviews with Johnson, who clearly articulates both his guiding philosophy about longevity and the reasons he’s undertaken his controversial course of action, dubbed “Project Blueprint.” That includes, most scandalously, blood transfusions with his father Richard and his eldest son Talmage, whom he refers to as his “blood boys.” The thinking behind this vampiric procedure is that studies with mice indicate that younger plasma helps rejuvenate older bodies and organs.

For Johnson, slowing down his internal aging rate is paramount, and this is one of many ways he thinks he can achieve that aim. Further aiding his mission is a strict exercise and dietary regimen (including taking 54 pills each morning), which dominates every aspect of his day, and other out-there treatments such as traveling to a make-up-your-own-laws region in Honduras known as Prospera where he receives Follistatin gene therapy that carries tremendous medical risks.

All of this resonates as more than a bit bizarre, especially when Johnson speaks about how he does daily HRV (heart rate variability) therapy to stimulate his nervous system in order to make his body more “parasympathetic,” or when he proclaims things like, “The mind is dead.” In the latter case, what Johnson is referring to is the foundational principle behind his endeavor: namely, that the reason people are so unhealthy (and don’t maximize their lifespan potential) is because they listen to their head more than their body.

To Johnson, doing what the body wants and needs to be in tip-top shape, rather than heeding one’s urges (for junk food, for cigarettes, for alcohol, etc.), is the key to longevity. “We have lost touch with basic self-care. We’re inebriated. We can’t see straight,” he proclaims. “We’re in a fight for our lives with ourselves.” For Johnson, giving himself over to his therapeutic algorithm has been “so liberating.”

When discussing his values and regimen and touting his supposed physical accomplishments, Johnson doesn’t come across as a total crank, and there are clearly some upsides to his behavior—he’s in great shape, and even if his claims about his slowing age rate aren’t totally believable (he says that for every 10 years, he’s only biologically aging eight years), he does appear to be getting the most out of his body.

Nonetheless, Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever raises the not-irrelevant issue that the all-consuming dedication required by Johnson’s formula means that he’s sacrificing life experiences today for additional years down the road. Moreover, interviews with a collection of longevity-focused scientists suggest that for all the good Johnson is doing for their field—which struggles for financing and clinical trials—he also sets their work back, or at least doesn’t push things forward, by doing things in an uncontrolled manner. As Harvard School of Medicine’s Dr. Vadim Gladyshev puts it, “It’s not science—it’s attention.”

Strangest of all in Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever is Johnson’s relationship with Talmage, who moves in with his dad for his senior year of high school after following in his footsteps by abandoning the Mormon church. Their bond is tight to the point of strangulation, and throughout the film, Johnson expresses great fear and sorrow over Talmage’s eventual departure for college—to the point of openly weeping in a Target over their impending separation.

While this may sound sweet, it resonates as unsettling, in large part because director Smith’s portrait implies that Johnson’s love for Talmage is related to his “anti-aging protocol.” Simply put, it feels like Johnson loves Talmage both because he’s his son and because he wants to be his son, who looks like the very idealized younger version of Johnson that the billionaire is striving to become.

Johnson made his fortune in the tech industry as one of the owners of Braintree Venmo, and there’s much talk in Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever about the fact that the entrepreneur’s decision to embark on this path was motivated by his unhappiness with a prior life beset by burdensome stress levels, a fraught marriage to the mother of his three children, and discontent with the Mormon faith in which he was raised.

If his reasons for following Project Blueprint were understandable, though, his conduct strikes some as shady; not only is he decried for partaking in dangerous treatments and for replacing one strict religion (Mormonism) with another equally rigid one (longevity), but he’s lambasted (in archival media clips) for turning his regimen into a money-making venture courtesy of the numerous anti-aging products he hawks on his web site.

Johnson and Talmage more or less embrace the notion that he’s now become something of a 21st-century self-help cult leader. Yet Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever points out that virtually no one else on Earth can afford to duplicate his routine, all while calling into question whether he’s doing anything more than flattering his own ego.

Time will tell if Johnson’s Project Blueprint protocol will provide insights into how humanity might extend lifespans. What’s not in doubt, however, is that Johnson will continue to drink his own Kool-Aid, and that many others will as well—possibly doing more harm than good to themselves and others.