Elizabeth Báthory Peter Thiel is one of a group of rich people trying to improve their health through someone else's blood. Transfusions from young people, to be Gothic and precise.
Seriously:
Healthy participants aged 35 and older get a transfusion of blood plasma from donors under 25, and researchers monitor their blood over the next two years for molecular indicators of health and aging.
It's part of a general biological process called parabiosis.
There are nice callbacks to the Dracula-style wealthy vampire theme. (Recall that there were many stories of poor, peasant vampires from the 1700s on. Stoker helped redefine the vampire as aristocrat, a theme picked up in our by Anne Rice)
The study is patient-funded; participants, who range in age from late 30s through 80s, must pay $8,000 to take part, and live in or travel to Monterey for treatments and follow-up assessments...
There are widespread rumors in Silicon Valley, where life-extension science is a popular obsession, that various wealthy individuals from the tech world have already begun practicing parabiosis, spending tens of thousands of dollars for the procedures and young-person-blood, and repeating the exercise several times a year.
The metaphors and jokes just make themselves, don't they?
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