Bryan Johnson Says He’s Cloned Himself “As a Newborn” to “Grow Organs for Transplantation,” Which Is a Preposterous Exaggeration

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Hubert Vestil/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty Images; Shutterstock Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Zillionaire eccentric Bryan Johnson, fresh off of being diagnosed with an incurable disease, says he just “cloned” himself “as a newborn.” Yep, you heard that right. The immortality influencer shared in an X update that he has a “baby” version of himself growing in a petri dish that he says will allow him to become his “own blood boy” — doesn’t he already have a son who does that for him? — and potentially even “grow organs for transplantation.” “This may be scary to some people… a dystopian future,” Johnson wrote. “But, for others, they will see it as the inevitable future of health.” In case this is all starting to sound like the grim sci-fi plot of a certain Michael Bay movie or Kazuo Ishiguro novel, it’s not a literal, living breathing clone. (Although by posting an infamous picture of himself edited to look like a baby, Johnson’s certainly playing into that impression.) Instead, Johnson’s created his own pluripotent stem cells. These stem cells can self-renew and develop into any type of cell in the body, making them invaluable for repairing damaged tissue. Where Johnson’s claims of cloning himself as a “newborn” come in is the fact that these highly versatile stem cells normally only exist when we’re still an embryo. But in recent decades scientists have developed techniques to reprogram regular adult cells into an embryonic pluripotent state, which are called induced pluripotent stem cells. Johnson is confident that by having his own store of stem cells on hand he can “rebuild” his body, repairing everything from damaged lungs to eyesight. “This technology gives us a path to reverse aging,” he declares. His optimism is admirable, but many of these stem cell applications he’s touting haven’t been proven yet. Johnson claims his baby clone will let him grow organs, for example, but scientists still haven’t developed a reliable technique for creating organs derived from someone’s own stem cells. One promising technique involves growing an organ in the body of another animal like a pig before transplanting it into a human, but these attempts have stopped when the organ was still in an embryo, and no transplantation has been attempted. An alternative that doesn’t involve stem cells, xenotransplantation, harvests organs from a genetically modified animal pig, but has only been demonstrated in human recipients who were braindead, with the transplanted organ slowly rejected over the course of several days. All that’s to say is that we should be skeptical about Johnson’s longevity advice, though we will certainly keep rubbernecking to see how his quixotic quest is going. More on health: Trump Is Having a Major Problem With Diarrhea