How a society gala was used to sell young-blood ... - Stat
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Mar 02, 2018 · How a society gala was used to sell young-blood transfusions to baby boomers desperate to cheat death. W EST PALM BEACH, Fla. — For the crowd of mostly baby boomers, who’d just finished their ...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — For the crowd of mostly baby boomers, who’d just finished their healthy lunch of salmon fillet on a bed of grains and vegetables, the warning could not have been more dire: You’re running out of time.
“We can’t sit still. We don’t have the time to do that,” bellowed Bill Faloon, the 63-year-old former mortician addressing them from the stage. To his left and right, giant screens projecting government actuarial tables reminded the group of the “projected year of our termination.” Men of Faloon’s age could expect to die in 2037. Any 83-year-old women in the room? They’ve got until only 2026.
“Take that initiative,” Faloon urged his audience of about 120 people who had flown in from as far as California, Scotland, and Spain. How? Paying to participate in a soon-to-launch clinical trial testing transfusions of young blood “offers the greatest potential for everyone in this room to add a lot of healthy years to their life,” Faloon said. “Not only do you get to potentially live longer … but you’re going to be healthier. And some of the chronic problems you have now may disappear.”

STAT got an inside look at this $195-a-head symposium, held last month in this wealthy beachside community. It offered a striking view of how promoters aggressively market scientifically dubious elixirs to aging people desperate to defy their own mortality.
Related:
Study raises caution about anti-aging benefits of blood transfusions from the young
At STAT’s request, eight independent experts reviewed informational handouts about the clinical trial, and all sharply criticized the study’s marketing, design, and scientific rationale.
“It just reeks of snake oil,” said Michael Conboy, a cell and molecular biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who’s collaborated on studies sewing old and young mice together and transfusing blood between them. “There’s no evidence in my mind that it’s going to work.”

Beyond the questionable science, participants have to pay big money to join the trial. Faloon, an evangelist of anti-aging research who cut a slim figure in his black suit and had the thick dark hair of a younger man, acknowledged during his talk that it would be “expensive” to sign up for the trial.
People considering enrolling said they had been told they would have to pay $285,000. But the Florida physician running the trial, Dr. Dipnarine Maharaj, said the final price tag is still being discussed in consultation with the Food and Drug Administration and is likely to change.
There’s long been a thriving market of supplements, creams, and pills that promise to forestall aging.
But lately, big players and investors have also spotted an opportunity: Google’s parent company has invested heavily in its secretive anti-aging spinout, called Calico. A startup called Celularity last month raised $250 million to try to use postpartum placentas to delay the aging process. And a company called Elysium Health has rallied Nobel Prize winners to sell a $50-per-month supplement aimed at boosting levels of a molecule known as NAD+ that’s hypothesized to play a role in promoting longevity, though not without prompting rebuke from some prominent doctors.
The experts consulted by STAT were dubious. Among their top concerns: Mixed but intriguing evidence in mice doesn’t yet justify testing this idea in humans, much less charging them a huge sum to sign up. And the study uses neither blinding nor a placebo group, design elements considered essential for rigorous medical research.





Pitching the fountain of youth
The “young blood project” symposium was gussied up as one of the dozens of galas that fill the winter social calendar here, with the pitch for Maharaj’s clinical trial artfully slipped in before the dessert of fruit and custard tart.
It was held on a Friday in February, at a glitzy performing arts center overlooking a Hilton hotel and a Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Five fountains spurted from a reflecting pool outside flanked by palm trees.
It’s about a 15-minute drive north of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and some 250 miles south of the site of the conquistador Ponce de León’s mythical search for the fountain of youth, now converted into a tourist attraction and a wedding venue.