“I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual,” venture capitalist Peter Thiel declared in his 2009 essay “The Education of a Libertarian.” His opposition to taxes and totalitarian collectives is hardly surprising; his ongoing campaign against human mortality is a bit more quixotic. For Thiel, death is just another obstacle to be overcome by the synergy of extraordinary wealth and cutting-edge technology.
Thiel’s vision can’t be called utopian, because it’s about no one but him. According to one of the more scandalous reports on his quest to live forever, he was considering injections of young people’s blood in an effort to slow the aging process, a service offered by a California company called Ambrosia. The story caught fire not only because of the dubious efficacy of the procedure but also because it looked like a literal expression of vampiric capitalism: the youth and strength of the poor harvested for the benefit of the ultrarich. This dystopian scenario was merely an exaggerated version of the grotesquely unequal US health care system, in which the wealthy buy longevity while the poor die prematurely for lack of basic care.
Thiel is not the first to explore the idea of life-extending blood transfusions. In fact, this practice has its origins in a truly utopian and egalitarian, if even more biologically suspect, experiment. Aleksandr Bogdanov, a prominent early Bolshevik and science fiction writer, investigated the rejuvenating properties of blood transfusions in the 1920s, though he soon died after exchanging blood with a tubercular student. As anthropologist Anya Bernstein discusses in The Future of Immortality: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russia, Bogdanov’s hope was not merely to prolong the lives of individuals; he envisioned a sanguine communism in which all were granted an equal share of society’s collective health through blood exchanges. In his popular 1908 sci-fi novel Red Star, a revolutionary Russian scientist travels to Mars and visits a communist society that has eliminated inequality—not just in property but also in health and strength—as well as gender binaries. The happy Martians participate in regular blood exchanges that extend their lives and break down the barriers among them.
Read Full Article »